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School-Classics 

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"^(D PAPERS.^ 



BY 



-Vy^lLLIAM ^. jHyVCKERAY. 

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NEW YORK: 

Clark cfe Maynard, Publishers, 

734 Broadway. 



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! 



Anderson's Historical Series, 



A Junior Class History of the United States. Illustrated with 
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CLARK & MAYNARD, Publishers, 

734 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 



JUN 13 



fl9W P 



No. 50. 
e:nglish classics. 



Roundabout Papers. 



By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 

•\ 

Round the Christmas Tree. 

De Juventute {Concerning Youth). 

Nil Nisi Bonum {Nothing unless good). 
De Ftnibus {Concemmg Conclusions). 
•On Letts's Diary. 

The Last Sketch. 



FOR SCHOOL AND H O 31 E USE. 




ALBERT F. BLAISDELL^>^,.™^„,, 

AUTHOR OF "outlines FOR THE STUDY OF ENGLISH CLASSICS,-' -" MEMORY 

QUOTATIONS," ANNOTATED EDITIONS OF "CHRISTMAS CAROL," 

" SKETCH BOOK," " WARREN HASTINGS," ETC. ETC. 



NEW YORK: 

Clark & Maynard, Publishers, 

734 Broadway. 



; English Classics, 

FOR 

CLASSES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE, READING, GRAMMAR, ETC. 

Edited et Eminent English and American Scholars. 

JUach Volume contains a Sl:etch of the Author's Life, Prefatory and 

Explanatory Notes, Etc., Etc. 



Byron's Prophecy of Dante. (Cantos 

I and II.) 
Milton's L.'Alleer« and H Penseroeo. 
Lord Bacon's £ s e u y s , 



Byr 

Mo« 



Civil and 
Moral. (Selected. ) 

trron's Prisoner of Chillon. 
oore's Fire W orsliippers. (Lalla 
Rookh. Selected from parts I. and II.) 

6 C?oldsmltli'8 Deserted Village. 

7 Scott's Marmion. (beleciions from 

Canto VI.) 

8 Scott's Lay of the Last MinstreL 

(Introduction and Cant > I.) 

9 Burns' Cotter's Saturday Night, and 

Other 1 oems. 

10 Crabbe's the Village. 

11 Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. 

(Abridgment of Part I. ) 

12 Maeaulay's Essay on Bunyan's Pil- 

grim's Progress. 
18 Maeaulay's Armada, end Other 
Poems. 

14 Shakespeare's Merchant of Ycnlce. 

(S,'lectinii6 from Acty 1., III. and 1 <.) 

15 Goldsmith's Traveller. 

16 Hogg's Queen's Wake. 

17 Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, 

18 Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley. 
19 Gray's Elegy in a Country Chureh- 

ynrd. 
SO Sci>tt"8 Lady of the Lake. (Canto I. ) 



SI 
SS 

S8 

S4 

25 

26 



Shakespeare's As You Like It, etc. 

( S. lections. ) 
Shakespeare's King John and King 

Richard IL (Selections.) 
Shakespeare's King Henry IV., 

King Henry V., and King Henry 

VI. (Selections ) 
Shakespeare's Henry VITI., and 

Julius Caesar. (Sekctions.) 
Wordsworth's Excursion. (Book I. 
Pope's Essay on Criticism. 
St Spenser's Eaery Queene. (Cantos 1. 

and II.) 
28 Cowper's Task. (Book I.) 
S9 Milton's Comus. 

80 Tennyson's Enoch Arden. 

81 Irving's Sketch Book. (Selections.) 

82 Dickens' Christmas CaroL (Con- 

densed.) 
88 Carlyle»s Hero as a Prophet. 
84 Maeaulay's VV arren Hastings. (Con- 
densed.) 

Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefleld. 
(Condensed.') 

Tennyson's The Two Voices and a 
Dream «f Fair A^ omen. 

Memory Quotations. 

Cavalier Poets. 

Dryden's Alexander's Feast and 
MacFlecknoe. 

Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes. 



85 
86 

8? 

88 
89 

40 



41 Irving's Legend of Sleepy Hollow. 

Others la Preparation. From 82 to 64 pages each, 16mo. 



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Plan of Preparation (Selected). By Bkainkrd Kellogg, A.M., Professor of the 
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and " Higher Lessons in English." 32mo, flexible, cloth. 

The text of these phiys of Shakespeare has been adapted for i:se in mixed classes, by the 
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selected to meet the requirements of School and College students, from editions edited by 
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eminent English Scholars. 

editions published. Printed from large type, bound in a very attractive cloth bindiiig, and 
sold at nearly one-half the price of other School Editions of Shakespeare. 



Paradise Iiost. (Book I.) Containing Sketch of Milton's Life— Essay on 
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and full Explanatory Notes. C'.oth, flexible, 94 pages. 

The Shakespeare Reader. Being Extracts from the Plays of Shakespeare 
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The Canterhury Tales— The prologue of Geoffrey Chaucer. The Text 
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An Essay on Man. By ALEXANDER F, Pope. With Clarke's Grammati- 
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Copyright, 1884, by Clark & Matnard. 



Life of Thackeray. 

WiLLiAH Makepeace Thackekat, one of the most emineut novelists in the 
history of English literature, was born at Calcutta in 1811. His father was in 
the civil service of the East India Company, and dying young, left his son a 
fortune of one hundred thousand pounds. The future novelist, when a boy of 
seven years of age, was sent to England to be educated and placed in the famous 
Charter House School. He entered Cambridge University in due time, but left 
without taking his degree. He spent some time in Germany, and at Weimar 
formed the acquaintance of Goethe. Thackeray's ambition was to become an 
artist, and, to this end, he traveled over most of Europe, studying at Rome and 
Paris. His sketches were bright and clever, but did not show proof of a master- 
hand. He next took to literature, and this ever afterward became his constant 
study and occupation. With a patient and contented heart, he began to work at 
the lowest step of the ladder. Under several quaint pseudonyms, he became a 
constant contributor to "Eraser's Magazine," and wrote for it two of the best of 
his minor works, The Great Hoggarty Diamond and Barry Lyndon. Under the 
pseudonym of Titmarsh he wrote several volumes of sketches. In the mean 
time, Thackeray had lost his fortune through unsuccessful speculations, and was 
thus forced to do literary work to gain a living. The establishment of the Lon- 
don Punch afforded him a more congenial field than he had hitherto enjoyed. 
His Snob Papers and Jeames's Diary were hailed with delight by a large circle of 
readers. The author's reputation was still more advanced by his novel of 
Vanity Fair, published in monthly parts in the style of Pickwick, during the 
years 1846-48. Thackeray illustrated the novel himself, or, as he expressed it, 
"illuminated with the author's own candle." In 1849, he began a second serial 
fiction, Pendennis, in which much of his own history and experiences is 
recorded. In 1851, the busy novelist gave a course of lectures on the " English 
Humorists of the Eighteenth Century," afterwards published in a volume with a 
course of lectures on the "Four Georges." These lectures are light, graceful 
sketches, full of passages of real power, tender pathos and eloquence. From 



4 LIFE OF THACKERAY. 

1852 to 1855 appeared two of Thackeray's great novels, Eenry Esmond and 
The Newcomes. These were followed by The Virginians, Philip, Level the 
Widower, and by a series of pleasant, gossipy essays called Roundabout Papers 
from which the following sketches have been selected. As editor of the '' Corn- 
hill Magazine " Thackeray had begun a new serial, Dennis Duval, which prom- 
ised to be one of his most elaborate and highly finished novels, when he was cut 
off in the fullness of his busy life. He was found dead in his bed on the morn- 
ing of the 24th of December, 1863. He had long been a sufferer from various 
physical maladies, among others of heart disease. 

Like Fielding, the great master of fiction, Thackeray had the same hatred of 
all meanness, cant, and knavery, the same large sympathy, relish of life, thought- 
ful humor, keen insight, delicate irony, and wit. While Fielding was utterly 
careless as to censure of his works, Thackeray was keenly sensitive to criticism 
and hurt to the quick by the slightest attack. His strength lay in portraying 
character rather than inventing incidents. While his earlier writings were 
tinged with a spirit of bitter cynicism and caustic satire, his later works showed 
the mellowing influence of years and suffering, and the merciless satirist became 
the genial humorist and philosophical observer. The great characteristic of 
Thackeray was his humanity. This is the crown and glory of his work. While 
he had scorn for vice and falsehood, and satire for folly and pretence, he had 
smiles and tears and tenderness and charity for ail that is true and good. 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, 1811-1863. 

His examples have all been efficacious in their teaching on the side of mod- 
esty and manliness, truth and simplicity.— ^.n^^ony Trollope. 



It is Thackeray's aim to represent life as it is actually and historically,— men 
and women as they are, in those situations in which they are usually placed, with 
that mixture of good and evil and of strength and foible which is to be found in 
their characters.— i^at^ec? Masson. 



The highest purely English novelist since Fielding, he combined Addison's 
love of virtue with Dr. Johnson's hatred of cant, Horace Walpole's lynx-like eye 
for the mean and the ridiculous, with the gentleness and wide charity for man- 
kind as a whole, of Goldsmith.— Jame^ Hannay. 



He is one of the healthiest writers who has attained celebrity since the days 
of Scott and Byron. His style— and a man's style is, as it were, his mind's com- 
plexion—is an index of it. Agreeable, manly, colloquial English,— the English 
of cultivated men,— such is the clear atmosphere we breathe in reading him.— 
London Athenceum. 



In his subtle, spiritual analysis of men and women, as we see them and live 
with them ; in his power of detecting enduring passions and desires, the 
strengths, the weaknesses, the deceits of the race, from under the mask of ordi- 
nary worldly and town life, he stood and stands alone and matchless. ~i?r. John 
Brown. 



The last words he corrected in print were, "And my heart throbbed with an 
exquisite bliss." God grant that on that Christmas Eve, when he laid his head 
back on his pillow and threw up his arms as he had been wont to do when very 
weary, some consciousness of duty done and Christian hope throughout life 
humbly cherished may have caused his own heart so to throb when he passed 
away to his Redeemer's rest \— Charles Dickens. 



THACKERAY'S BEST WORKS. 

Thackeray was a voluminous writer. His characters are as life-like as those 
of Scott, and usually drawn with great power. His plots are loose and ram- 
bling, and the chief interest centres in the masterly dialogue. Thackeray's first, 
and as many consider it, his greatest novel, Vanity Fair^ gives an account of 
two great characters in fiction,— the one, Becky Sharp, the sharp, clever, unscrur 
pulous governess ; the otlier, Amelia Sedley, sweet, amiable, pretty, but insipid. 
Pendennis, a man full of faults and weaknesses, is the hero of Fe'ndennis. The 
Major, a worldly old beau, and George Warrington, who acts as the hero's good 
genius, are capitally drawn. Esmond^ considered the most perfect of Thack- 
eray's novels, is in the form of an autobiography supposed to be written in the 
time of Queen Anne. Dean Swift, Coiigreve, Addison and Steele are introduced 
as characters into this novel. The Newcomes relates the history of the simple, 
kind-hearted Colonel Newcome and sweet Ethel Newcome, his daughter, and the 
heroine of the story, the best of Thackeray's female characters and so esteemed 
by the author himself. The Virginians, a story of the times of Dr. Johnson, 
gives the history of the grandsons of Esmond. The war of the Eevolution forms 
a part of the historical ground-work of the plot. Thackeray also wrote some 
admirable Christmas stories, full of charming grace and playful irony. 



WHAT TO READ OF THACKERAY. 

In addition to the three sketches from Roundabout Papers, in this number of 
the Englisli classics, the following papers, from the same volume, represent Thack- 
eray at his best in this style of writing:— "On a Hundred Years Hence," "" On 
Lett's Diary," " Notes on a Week's Holiday," " Ogres," " On Being Found Out," 
" On Two Children in Black." The Lectures on the English Hmnorists, especially 
that on " Sterne and Goldsmith," will alford delightful reading to the young stu- 
dent of literature. The Four Georges depicts the darker side of Germanized 
English court hfe. The domestic tragedy of "Farmer George," third of the 
name, is described with great pathos, closing with a passage full of mournful 
beauty and deep feeling. The preceding selections from Thackeray's writings do 
not, of course, represent his best work. For this we must turn to his great 
novels. The young student is advised to read enough of Vanity Fair to get a 
fair idea of the great character of Becky Sharp, and of The Newcomes to appre- 
ciate that lovely picture of womanhood in the character of the gentle Ethel New- 
come. Other selections may well be left to the advice of some experienced stu- 
dent of Thackeray's works. 



REFERENCES. 

The three best works on the life and writings of Thackeray's are Anthony 
Trollope's Thackeray in the " English Men of Letters Series." Blanchard Jer- 
rold's "Day with Thackeray" in his Bext of All Good Company^ ajul James T. 
Fields's Yesterday with Authors. Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgli, autlior of 
'• Rub and his Friends," wrote lovingly of the great novelist in the second series 
of his Spare Hours. Two of the best critical essays are to be found in Peter 
Bayne's Essays in Biography, and Whipple's Character and Characteiistic Men. 
See also Hannay's Studies on Thackeray. Brimley's Essays, and tlie French view 
in Taine's English Literature. In Kellogg's English Literature, page 280, may 
be found references to the most noteworthy articles on Thackeray in the lead- 
ing periodicals. 



Roundabout Papers. 



" Those queer, delightful, rambling, thoroughly Thackerayesque Roundabout 
Papers, which many aouse but all delight in— frolics of genius ' wandering at its 
own sweet will' through all wildernesses of topics, past and present."— M//iaw 

Francis Collier. 

PREFATORY NOTE. 

In 1859, Thackeray undertook the last great work of his life, the editorship 
of The Cornhill Magazine, a periodical set on foot by a London publisher, with 
an amount of energy greater than has generally been bestowed upon such 
enterprises. The fact tliat Thackeray was to edit the new magazine attracted 
great attention, and undoubtedly caused the enormous sales which the early 
numbers had. While The VornldU proved to be deservedly popular with the 
reading world, it was generally admitted that Thackeray was not a good 
editor. He was not the man to have a patient and scrupulous mastery over 
the perplexing details of an editor's daily work. Prone to work by fits and 
starts ; unmethodical and keenly sensitive to the heart-rending appeals which 
accompanied the piles of manuscript laid on his table, Thackm-ay could not have 
been a successful editor. He resigned his editorship in April, 1862, but con- 
tinned to write for the magazine until he died, the day before Christmas in 1863. 

The "Roundabout Papers," from which we have taken the three following 
sketches, were published in The Cornhill Magazine, They are light, gossipy 
essays, and while they do not show the author at his best, are marked by a 
genial wit, tender pathos, and kindly sympathy, which characterizes the great 
novelist's rare charm of style. 



Round about the Christmas Tree, 

The kindly Christmas tree, from which I trust every gentle 
reader has pulled a bonbon or two, is yet all aflame whilst I am 
writing, and sparkles with the sweet fruits of its season. You 
young ladies, may you have plucked pretty giltlings from it; 
and out of the cracker sugar-plum which you have split with 
the captain or the sweet young curate may you have read one of 
those delicious conundrums which the confectioners introduce 
into the sweetmeats, and which apply to the cunning passion of 
love. Those riddles are to be read at ijoiir age, when I dare say 
they are amusing. As for Dolly, Merry, and Bell, who are stand- 
ing at the tree, they don't care about the love-riddle part, but 
understand the sweet-almoued portion very well. They are four, 



8 EOUNDABOUT PAPEKS. 

five, six years old. Patience, little people ! A dozen merry 
Christmases more, and you will be reading those wonderful love- 
conundrums too. As for us elderly folks, we watch the babies 
at their sport, and the young peoi)le pulling at the branches: 
and instead of finding bonbons or sweeties in the packets which 
we pluck ofi" the boughs, we find enclosed Mr. Carnifex's ^ review 
of the quarter's meat; Mr. Sartor's ccmipliments, and little state- 
ment for self and the young gentlemen : and Madame de Sainte- 
Crinoline's respects to the young ladies, wlio encloses her 
account, and will send on Saturday, please ; or we stretch our 
hand out to the educational b]"anch of the Christmas tree, and 
there find a lively and amusing article from the Kev. Henry 
Holyshade, containing our dear Tommy's exceedingly moderate 
account for the last term's school expenses. 

The tree yet sparkles, I say. I am writing on the day before 
Tw'elfth Day,- if you must know ; but already ever so many of 
the fruits have been pulled, and the Christmas lights have gone 
out. Bobby Miseltow, who has been staying with us for a week, 
comes to say he is going away to sj)end the rest of the holidays 
with his grandmother— and I brush away the manly tear of 
regret as I part with the dear child. " Well, Bob, good-by, since 
you luill go. Compliments to grandmamma. Thank her for the 

turkey. Here's " {A slight pecuniary transaction takes place at 

this juncture^ and Boh nods and winks, and puts his hand in his 
waistcoat pocket.) " You have had a pleasant week ? ' 

Bob. — " Haven't I ! " {And exit, anxious to know the amount of 
the coin which has just changed hands.) 

He is gone, and as the dear boy vanishes through the door I 
too cast up a little account of our past Christmas week.^ "When 



1. Mr. Carnifex, Mr. Sartor, etc.— Notice the significance of the names of 
these imaginary characters. Carnifex literally means the maker of flesh ; Sartor, 
Latin for tailor. The other names explain themselves. 

2. Twelfth Day.— The twelfth day after Christmas (Jan. 6th) was in olden 
times the season of universal festivity. For full explanation see articles ou 
"Epiphany "" and "Jan. (jth " in Chambers's Soak of Daijs. 

3. Christmas Week.— The reader will find descriptions of the English cele- 
bration of Christmas-time in Dickeus's (Jhrintmas Carol and Irving's Sketch 
Book and Bracebridge Hall. 



KOUKDABOUT PAPERS. 9 

Bob's liolidays are over, I know Christmas will be an old story. 
All the fruit will be off the Christmas tree then ; the crackers will 
have cracked off; the almonds will have been crunched ; and the 
sweet-bitter riddles will have been read ; the lights will have 
perished off the dark green boughs; the toys growing on them 
will have been distributed, fought for, cherished, neglected, 
broken. Ferdinand and Fidelia will each keejj out of it the 
remembrance of a riddle, read together, of a double almond 
munched together, and the moiety of an exploded cracker * * * 
The maids, I say, will have taken down all that holly stuff and 
nonsense about the clocks, lamps, and looking-glasses, the dear 
boys will be back at school, fondly thinking of the pantomime 
fairies* whom they have seen and whose gaudy gossamer wings 
are battered by this time. Yet but a few days. Bob, and flakes 
of paint will have cracked on the fairy flower-bowers, and the 
revolving temples of adamantine lustre will be as shabl)y as the 
city of Pekin. When you read this, will Clown still be going on 
lolling his tongue out of his mouth, and saying, " How are you 
to-morrow ? " To-morrow, indeed ! He must be almost ashamed 
of himself (if that cheek is still capable of the blush of shame) 
for asking the absurd question. To-morrow, indeed ! To-mor- 
row the diffugient snows will give place to Spring ; the snow- 
drops will lift their heads ; Ladyday^ may be expected, and the 
pecuniary duties peculiar to that feast; in place of bonbons, 
trees will have an eruj)tion of light green knobs; the whitebait 
season will bloom * * * as if one need go on describing these 
vernal phenomena, when Christmas is still here, though ending, 
and the subject of my discourse! 

We have all admired the illustrated papers,*"' and noted how 
boisterously jolly they become at Christmas time. What wassail- 



4. Pantoiuime Fairies,— The Christmas pantomime plays a? brought out 
at the London theatres are most important features of the Christmas festivities. 
Thej^ are gorgeous combinations of song and dance, of fun and parody, of fairy 
scenes and delicious music. 

5. L,adyday — One of the regular quarter-days in England on which rent is 
generally "made payable. It is the 25th of March in each year. 

6. Jllustrated Papers.— The magnificent and costly Christmas numbers of the 
London Illustrated papers are to be found on almost every news stand on this 
side of the Atlantic. A sale of more tliau half a million copies of the most pop- 
ular paper is claimed. 4 



10 ROUI^DABOUT PAPERS. 

bowls, robin-redbreasts, waits, snow landscapes, bursts of Christ- 
mas song ! And then to think that these festivities are prepared 
months before — that these Christmas pieces are prophetic ! How 
kind of artists and poets to devise tiie festivities beforehand, and 
serve them pat at the proper time ! We ought to be grateful 
to them, as to the cook who gets up at midnight and sets the 
pudding a boiling, which is to feast us at six o'clock. I often 
think with gratitude of the famous Mr. Nelson Lee — the author 
of I don't know how many hundred glorious pantomimes — walk- 
ing by the summer wave at Margate,'' or Brighton perhaps, re- 
volving in his mind the idea of some new gorgeous spectacle of 
faery, which the winter shall see complete. He is like cook at 
midnight. He watches and thinks. He pounds the sparkling- 
sugar of benevolence, the plums of fjincy, the sweetmeats of fun, 
the figs of — well, the figs of fairy fiction, let us say, and pops the 
whole in the seething cauldron of imagination, and at due season 
serves up the Pantomime. 

Very few men, in the course of nature, can expect to see all 
the 23antomimes in one season, but I hope to the end of my life I 
shall never forego reading about them in that delicious sheet of 
The Times^ which ajDpears in the morning after Boxing-day. 
Perhaps reading is even better than seeing. The best way, I 
think, is to say you are ill, lie in bed, and have the paper for 
two hours, reading all the way down from Drury Lane ^ to the 
Britannia at Hoxton. Bob and I went to two pantomimes. One 
was at the Theatre of Fancy, and the other at the Fairy Opera, 
and I don't know which we liked the best. 

Bob's behavior on New Year's day, I can assure Dr. Holyshade, 
was highly creditable to the boy. He had expressed a determi- 
nation to partake of every dish which was put on the table ; but 
after soup, fish, roast-beef, and roast-goose, he retired from 
active business until the j^udding and mince pie made their 

7. Margate— Brighton. — Two fashionable and popular seaside resorts in 
England. 

8. The Times.— The famous daily newspaper of London, popularly nick- 
named as " The Thunderer." 

9. Drury I^ane —The oldest, as it is also the largest and handsomest, of the 
theatres proper of London. Britannia.— A commodious and unusually well 
built London theatre. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 11 

appearance, of which he partook liberally, but not too freely. 
Our young friend amused the company during the evening, by 
exhibiting a two-shilling magic-lantern, which he had purchased, 
and likewise by singing " Sally, come up! " a quaint, but rather 
monotonous melody, which I am told is sung by the poor negro 
on the banks of the broad Mississippi. 

What other enjoyments did we proffer for the child's amuse- 
ment during the Christmas week ? A great philosopher was 
giving a lecture to young folks '" at the British institution. But 
when this diversion was jDroposed to our young friend Bob, he 
said, "Lecture? No, thank you. Not as I knows on,' and 
made sarcastic signals on his nose. Perhaps he is of Dr. John- 
son's opinion about lectures : " Lectures, sir ! what man would 
go to hear that imperfectly at a lecture which he can read at 
leisure in a book ? " / never went, of my own choice, to a lec- 
ture ; that I can vow. As for sermons, they are different; I 
delight in them, and they cannot, of course, be too long. 

Well, we partook of yet other Christmas delights besides 
pantomime, pudding, and pie. One glorious, one delightful, 
one most unlucky and pleasant day, we drove in a brougham, 
with a famous horse, which carried us more quickly and briskly 
than any of your vulgar railways, over Battersea Bridge, on 
which the horse's hoofs rung as if it had been iron ; through 
suburban villages, plum-caked with snow ; under a leaden sky, 
in w4iich the sun hung like a red-hot warming-pan ; by pond 
after pond, where not only men and boys, but scores after scores 
of women and girls, were sliding, and roaring, and clapping their 
lean old sides with laughter, as they tumbled down, and their 
Ijob nailed shoes flew up in the air; the air frosty with a lilac 
liaze, through which villas, and commons, and churches, and 
plantations glimmered. We drive U23 the hill, Bob and I ; we 
make the last two miles in eleven minutes ; we p)ass that poor, 
armless man who sits there in the cold, following you with his 
eyes. I don't give anything, and Bob looks disappointed. We 

10. Lecture to Younj; Folks.— Familiar lectures; on scientific subjects have 
1)een siven in London (liirin<r the holiday season for many years. Such men as 
Faraday, Tyndall and other eminent scientists have given these lectures. 



12 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

are set down neatly at the gate, and a borse-holder opens the 
brougham door. I don't give anything; again disappointment 
on Bob's part. I pay a shilling apiece, and we enter into the 
glorious building," which is decorated for Christmas, and straight- 
way forgetfuUiess on Bob's part of everything but that magnificent 
scene. The enormous edifice is all decorated for Bob and Christmas. 
The stalls, the columns, the fountains, courts, statues, splendors, 
are all crowned for Christmas. The delicious negro is singing his 
Alabama choruses for Christmas and Bob. He has scarcely done, 
when, Tootarootatoo ! Mr. Punch '^ is performing his surprising- 
actions, and hanging the beadle. The stalls are decorated. The 
refreshment-tables are piled with good things; at many fountains 
" Mulled ClaIiet " is written up in appetizing capitals. 
"Mulled Claret — oh, jolly! How cold it is!" says Bob; I i3ass 
on. "It's only three o'clock," says Bob. "No, only three," I 
say, meekly. " We dine at seven," sighs Bob, " and it's so-o-o 
coo-old.'' I still would take no hints. No claret, no refreshment, 
no sandwiches, no sausage-rolls for Bob. At last I am obliged 
to tell him all. Just before we left home, a little Christmas bill 
popped in at the door and emptied my purse at the threshold. 
I forgot all about the transaction, and had to borrow half a crown 
from John Coachman to pay for our entrance into the palace of 
delight. Now you see. Bob, why I could not treat you on that 
second of January when we drove to the palace together; when 
the girls and boys were sliding on the ponds at Dulwich ; when 
the darkling river was full of floating ice, and the sun was like a 
warming-pan in the leaden sky. 

One more Christmas sight we had, of course ; and that sight I 
think I like as well as Bob himself at Christmas, and at all sea- 
sons. We went to a certain garden of delight,'^ where, whatever 



11. Glorious Building.-— The Crystal Palace is about seven miles from Lon- 
don. Erected at a cost of nearly £1,500,000. The palace and grounds, which 
cover about 200 acres, were opened in 1854. Exhibitions and entertainments of 
almost every description are held within its precincts. 

12. Mr. Punch.— Reference is made to the well-known and popular exhibi- 
tion called " Punch and Judy." 

13. Certain Garden of Dellg'lit.— Zoological Gardens, situated near the 
Regent's Park, London, and containing the largest and best-arranged collection 
of wild beasts and birds in the world. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 13 

your cares are, I think you can manage to forget some of them, 
and muse, and be not unhai^j^y ; to a garden beginning with a Z, 
which is as lively as Noah's ark ; where the fox has brought his 
brush, and the cock has brought his comb, and the elephant has 
])rought his trunk, and the kangaroo has brought his bag, and 
the condor his old white wig and black satin hood. On this 
day it was so cold that the white bears winked their pink eyes, 
as they plapped up and down by their pool, and seemed to say, 
" Aha, this weather reminds us of dear home ! " " Cold ! bah ! 
I have got such a warm coat," says brother Bruin, "I don't 
mind ;" and he laughs on his pole, and clocks down a bun. The 
squealing hyenas gnashed their teeth and laughed at us quite 
refreshingly at their window ; and, cold as it was, Tiger, Tiger, 
burning bright, glared at us red-hot through his bars, and snorted 
blasts of hell. The woolly camel leered at us quite kindly as he 
paced round his ring on his silent pads. We Y»^ent to our favor- 
ite places. Our dear wambat came up and had himself scratched 
very affably. Our fellow-creatures in the monkey-room held out 
their little black hands, and x^iteously asked us for Christmas 
alms. Those darling alligators on their rock winked at us in the 
most friendly way, The solemn eagles sat alone, and scowled at 
us from their peaks ; whilst little Tom Ratel tumbled over head 
and heels for us in his usual diverting manner. If I have cares 
in my mind, I come to the Zoo, and fancy they don't pass the 
gate. I recognize my friends, my enemies, in countless cages. I 
entertained the eagle, the vulture, the old billy-goat, and the 
black-pated, crimson-necked, blear-eyed, baggy, hook-beaked old 
marabou stork yesterday at dinner ; and when Bob's aunt came 
to tea in the evening, and asked him what he had seen, he 
stepped up to her gravely, and said : 

" First I ?aw the white bear, then I saw the black, 
Then I saw the camel witil a hump upon his back. 

GMMrm \ ""^^^ ^ ^^^ ^^^ camel with a hump upon his back ! 

Then I saw the gray wolf, with mutton in his maw 
Then I saw the wambat waddle in the straw : 
Then 1 saw the elephant with his waving trunk, 
Then I saw the monkeys— mercy, how unpleasantly 
they smelt I " 



14 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

There. No one can beat tliat piece of wit, can he, Bob ? And 
so it is all over; but we had a jolly time, whilst you were with 
us, hadn't we ? Present my respects to the doctor ; and I hope, 
my boy, we may spend another merry Christmas next year. 



De Juventute, 

{Concerning Youth). 



Our last paper of this veracious and roundabout series related 
to a period which can only be historical to a great number of 
readers of this Magazine. Four I saw at the station to-day with 
orange-covered books in their hands, who can but have known 
George IV.^ by books, and statues, and pictures. Elderly gentle- 
men were in their prime, old men in their middle age, when he 
reigned over us. His image remains on coins; on a picture or 
two hanging here and there in a Club or old-fashioned dining- 
room ; on horseback, as at Trafalgar Square,^ for example, where 
I defy any monarch to look more uncomfortable. Charon has 
paddled him off; he has mingled with the crowded repul)lic of 
the dead. His effigy smiles from a canvas or two. Breechless 
he bestrides his steed in Trafalgar Square. I believe he still 
wears his robes at Madame Tussaud's ^ (Madame herself having 
quitted Baker Street and life, and found him she modeled t'other 
side the Stygian stream). On the head of a tive-shilling piece 
we still occasionally come upon him, with St. George," the 
dragon-slayer, on the other side of the coin. Ah me 1 did this 
George slay many dragons? Was he a brave, heroic champion 
and rescuer of virgins ? Well ! well ! have you and I overcome 

1. George IV.— King of England from 1820 to 1830. The subject of one of 
Thackeray's lectures. 

2. Trafalgar Square.— One of the great squares of London. Admh-al Nel- 
son's monument, with its four lions, is its most conspicuous feature. 

3. Madame Tussard.— Tussard's exhibition of waxworks and Napoleonic 
relics is one of the oldest and popular exhibitions in London. 

4. St. George, the Dragon Slayer.— The national saint of England, in con- 
sequence of the miraculous assistance rendered by him to the armies of the 
Christians under Godfrey de Bouillon during the first crusade. 



ROtTNDABOUT PAPERS. 15 

all the dragons that assail us? come alive and victorious out of 
all the caverns which we have entered in life, and succored, at 
risk of life and limb, all poor distressed persons in whose naked 
limbs the dragon Poverty ^ is about to iasten his fangs, whom the 
dragon Crime is poisoning with his horrible breath, and about to 
crunch up and devour? O my royal liege! O my gracious 
prince and warrior! You a champion to fight that monster^ 
Your feeble spear ever pierce that slimy paunch or plated back ? 
See how the flames come gurgling out of his red-hot brazen 
throat! What a roar! Nearer and nearer he trails, with eyes 
flaming like the lamps of a railroad engine. How he squeals, 
rushing out tiirough the darkness of his tunnel ! Now he is 
near. Now he is here. And now — what? — lance, shield, knight, 
feathers, horse and all ? O horror, horror ! Next day, round 
the' monster's cave, there lie a few bones more. You, who wish 
to keep yours in your skins, be thankful that you are not called 
upon to go out and fight dragons. Be grateful that they don't 
sally out and swallow you. Keep a wise distance from their 
caves, lest you pay too dearly for approaching them. Remember 
that years passed, and whole districts were ravaged, before the 
warrior came who was able to cope with the devouring monster. 
When that knight does make his apjDearance, with all my heart 
let us go out and welcome him with our best songs, huzzas, and 
laurel wreaths, and eagerly recognize his valor and victory. But 
he comes only seldom. Countless knights were slain before St. 
George won the battle. In the battle of life are we all going to 
try for the honors of championship ? If we can do our duty, if 
we can keep our place pretty honorably through the combat, let 
us say, Laus Beo ! at the end of it, as the firing ceases, and the 
night falls over the field. 

The old were middle-aged, the elderly were in their prime, 
then, thirty years since, when yon royal George was still fighting 
the dragon. As for you, my pretty lass, with your saucy tat and 
golden tresses tumbled in your net, and you, my spruce young 
gentleman in your mandarin's cap (the young folks at the coun- 



5. Poverty— Crime,— For collateral reading, read the apostrophe to poverty 
and crime in JDicliens's Christmas Carol. 



16 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

try-place where I am staying are so attired), your parents were 
unknown to each other, and wore short frocks and short jackets, 
at the date of this five-shilling piece. Only to-day I met a dog- 
cart crammed with children — children with mustaches and man- 
darin caps — children with saucy hats and hair-nets — children in 
short frocks and knickerbockers (surely the prettiest boy's 
dress that has appeared these hundred years) — children from 
twenty years of age to six ; and father, with mother by his side, 
driving in front — and on father's countenance I saw that very 
laugh which I remember perfectly in the time when this crown- 
piece was coined— in his time, in King George's time, when we 
were school-boys seated on the same form. The smile was just 
as broad, as bright, as jolly, as I remember it in the past — unfor- 
gotten, though not seen or thought of, for how many decades of 
years, and quite and instantly familiar, though so long out of 
sight. 

Any contemporary of that coin who takes it up and reads the 
inscription round the laureled head, "Georgius IV. Britannia- 
rum Rex. Fid : Def. 1823," ^' if he will but look steadily enough at 
the round, and utter the proper incantation, I dare say may con- 
jure back his life there. Look well, my elderly friend, and tell 
me w^hat you see. First, I see a Sultan, with hair, beautiful hair, 
and a crown of laurels round his head, and his name is Georgius 
Rex. Fid. Def, and so on. Now the Sultan has disappeared; 
and what is that I see ? A boy, — a boy in a jacket. He is at a 
desk ; he has great books before him, Latin and Greek books and 
dictionaries. Yet, but behind the great books which he pretends 
to read, is a little one, with pictures, which he is really reading. 
It is— yes, I can read now— it is the " Heart of Mid Lothian," '' 
by the author of " Waverley "—or, no, it is " Life in London, or 
the Adventures of Corinthian Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, and 
their friend Bob Logic," by Pierce Egan ; ' and it has pictures — 
oh, such funny pictures ! As he reads, there comes behind the 

6. Georgius IV.. etc.— This Latin inscription translated means, "George 
the Fourth, King of the Britains, Defender of the Faith (Fidei Defensor). l%-i2,^' 

7. Heart of Mid L,otliian.— One of Scott's most popular novels. Pierce 
Egan, —A writer of sensational romances, also a frequent contributor to the 
London press. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 17 

boy, a man, a dervish, in a black gown, like a woman, and a 
black square cap, and lie has a book in each hand, and he seizes 
the boy who is reading the picture book, and lays his head upon 
one of his books, and smacks it with the other. The boy makes 
faces, and so tliat picture disappears. 

Now the boy has grown bigger. He has got on a black gown 
and cap, something like the dervish; He is at a table, with ever 
so many bottles on it, and fruit, and tobacco ; and other young 
dervishes come in. They seem as if they were singing. To 
them enters an old moollah, he takes down their names, and 
orders them all to go to bed. What is this? a carriage, with 
four beautiful horses all galloping — a man in red is blowing a 
trumpet. Many young men are on the carriage — one of them is 

driving the horses. Surely they won't drive into that ? 

ah ! they have all disappeared. And now I see one of the young 
men alone. He is walking in a street — a dark street — presently 
a light comes to a window. There is the shadow of a lady who 
passes. He stands there till the light goes out. Now he is in a 
room scribbling on a piece of paper, and kissing a miniature 
every now an<l then. They seem to be lines each pretty much of 
a length. I can read hearty smart, dart; Mary, f^iry ; Cupid, 
stupid; true, you; and never mind what more. Bah! it is 
bosh. Now see, he has got a gown on again, and a wig of white 
hair on his head, and he is sitting with other dervishes in a great 
room full of them, and on a throne in the middle is an old Sultan 
in scarlet, sitting before a desk, and he wears a wig too — and the 
young man gets up and speaks to him. And now what is here? 
He is in a room with ever so many children, and the miniature 
hanging up. Can it be a likeness of that woman who is sitting 
before that copper urn, with a silver vase in her hand, from 
which she is pouring hot liquor into cups? Was she ever a 
fairy ? She is as fat as a hippopotamus now. 

They say that cookery is much improved since the days of my 
monarch— of George IV. Pastry Oookery is certainly not so 
good. I have often eaten half-a-crown's worth (including, I 
trust, ginger-beer) at our school pastrycook's, and that is a proof 
that the pastry must have been very good, for could I do as 



18 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

mucli now? I passed by the pastrycook's shop lately, having 
occasion to visit ray old school. It looked a very dingy old 
baker's; misfortunes may have come over him— those penny 
tarts certainly did not look so nice as I remember them ; but he 
may have grown careless as he has grown old (I should judge 
him to be now about ninety six years of age), and his hand may 
have lost its cunning. 

Not that we were not great epicures. I remember how we 
constantly grumbled at the quantity of the food in our master's 
house — which on my ccmscience I believe was excellent and 
plentiful and ln»w we tried once or twice to eat him out of 
house and home. At the pastrycook's we may have over-eaten 
ourselves (I have admitted half-a-crown's worth for my own part, 
but I don't like to mention the real figure for fear of perverting 
the present generation of boys by my own monstrous confession) 
— we may have eaten too much, I say. We did ; but what then ? 
The school apothecary was sent for : a couple of small globules 
at night, a trifling preparation of senna in the^ morning, and we 
had not to go to school, so that the draught was an actual 
pleasure. 

For our amusements, besides the games in vogue, which were 
pretty much in old times as they are now. There were novels — 
ah ! I trouble you to find such novels in the present day ! O 
Scottish Chiefs,'^ didn't we weep over you ! O Mysteries of 
Udolpho,^ didn't I and Briggs Minor draw pictures out of you, 
as I have said ? Efforts, feeble indeed, but still giving pleasure 
to us and our friends. " I say, old Boy, draw us Vivaldi tortured 
in the Inquisition," or " Draw us Don Quixote and the wind- 
mills, you know," amateurs would say, to boys who had love of 
drawing. " Peregrine Pickle " '^ we liked, our fathers admiring- 
it, and telling us (the sly old boys) it was capital fun ; but I 
think I was rather bewildered by it, though " Roderick Random " 



8. Scottish Chiefs.— The name of a romantic and popular novel by Jane 
Porter (1776-1850). Mysteries of Udolpho.— A sensational novel by Mrs. 
Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823). 

9. Peregrine Pickle — Roderick Random. —Two novels b" Saiollet 
(17-21-1771). 



KOUNDABOUT PAPERS. 19 

was and remains delightful. I don't remember having Sterne*" 
in the school library, no donbt because the works of that divine 
were not considered decent for young people. Ah! not against 
thy genius, O father of Uncle Toby and Trim, would I say a 
word in disrespect. But I am thank fnl to live in times when 
men no longer have the temptation to write so as to cull blushes 
on women's cheeks, and would shame to whisper wicked allu- 
sions to honest boys. Then, above all, we had Walter Scott," 
the kindly, the generous, the pure — the companion of what 
countless delightful hours; and purveyor of how much happi- 
ness ; the friend whom we recall as the constant benefactor of 
our youth ! How well I remember the type and the brownish 
paper of the old duodecimo " Tales of my Landlord ! " I have 
never dared to read the " Pirate," and the " Bride of Lammer- 
moor," or " Kenilworth," from that day to this, because the final 
is unhappy, and jDcople die, and are murdered at the end. But 
'' Ivanhoe," and " Quentin Durward !" Oh ! for a half-holiday, 
and a quiet corner, and one of those books again ! Those books, 
and perhaps those eyes with which we read them ; and, it may 
be, the brains behind the eyes ! It may be the tart was good ; 
but how fresh the appetite was! If the gods would give me the 
desire of my heart, I should be able to write a story which boys 
would relish for the next few dozen of centuries. The boy-critic 
loves the story : grown up, he loves the author who wrote the 
story. Hence the kindly tie is established between writer and 
reader, and lasts pretty nearly for life. I meet people now who 
don't care for Walter Scott, or the "Arabian Nights." I am 
sori-y for them, unless they in their time have found their ro- 
mancer — their charming Scherazade. By the way, Walter, when 
you are writing, tell me who is the favorite novelist in the fourth 
form now? Have you got anything so good and kindly as 



10. Lawrence Sterne. — 1713-1768. An eccentric and brilliant novelist. In 
Tnstram Shandy, a bio<rraphical romance, the characters of Uncle Toby, a 
veteran officer, and his servant, Corporal Trim, are conceived and executed in 
the finest spirit of liumor, tenderness, and observation. 

11. Sir AValter Seott.— 1771-1882. One of the few great masters of fiction, 
author of the " Waverley Novels." 



20 ROUI^DABOUT PAPERS. 

clear Miss Edgeworth's '^ Franhf It used to belong to a fellow's 
sisters generally ; but though he pretended to despise it, and 
said, " Oh, stuff for girls ! " he read it ; and I think there were 
one or two passages which would try my eyes now, were I to 
meet with the little book. 

As for Thomas and Jeremiah (it is only my witty way of call- 
ing Tom and Jerry), I went to the British Museum '-^ the other 
day on purpose to get it; but somehow, if you will press the 
question too closely, on reperusal, Tom and Jerry is not so 
brilliant as I had supposed it to be. The pictures are just as 
fine as ever; and I shook hands with broad-backed Jerry 
Hawthorn and Corinthian Tom with delight, after many years' 
absence. But the style of the writing, I own, was not pleasing 
to me; I even thought it a little vulgar — well! well! other 
writers have been considered vulgar — and as a description of the 
sports and amusements of London in the ancient times, more 
curious than amusing. 

But the pictures I — oh! the pictures are noble still! First, 
there is Jerry arriving from the country, in a green coat and 
leather gaiters, and being measured for a fashionable suit at 
Corinthian House, by Corinthian Tom's tailor. Then away for 
the career of pleasure and fashion. The park ! delicious excite- 
ment ! The theatre ! the saloon ! ! the green-room ! ! ! Rapturous 
bliss — the opera itself! and then perhaps to Temple Bar. There 
are Jerry and Tom and Jerry. A turn or two in Bond Street, a 
stroll through Piccadilly, a looh in at Tattersall's, a ramble 
through Pall Mall, and a strut on the Corinthian path, fully 
occupied the time of our heroes until the hour for dinner ar- 
rived." 

How nobly those inverted commas, those italics, those capitals. 



12. Maria Edge worth.— 1767-1849. One of the most popular writers of the 
early part of this century. Her stones for the younp:, as Harriet and Lucy and 

- lie ~ — ■ • ~ - ■ -.--.. ^ .. , 



Sf/san, are still remembered. Speakhig of the latter story, Scott, who 
prized Miss Edgeworth's tales, said, "There's nothing for it but just to put 
down the book and cry." 

13. British Museum. —The great national storehouse of the treasures and 
curiosities of science, art and literature. In the library alone there are 1,300,000 
printed volumes. It is situated in Great Russell St., London, and is open to the 
public under the most liberal rules. 



rou:n^dabout papers. 21 

bring out the writer's wit and relieve the eye ! They are as good 
as jokes, though you mayn't quite perceive the point. Mark the 
varieties of lounge in which the young men indulge— now a s^/'oZZ, 
then a hole in^ then a ramble^ and presently a strut. When 
George, Prince of Wales, was twenty, I have read in an old 
Magazine, " the Prince's lounge" was a jDeculiar manner of walk- 
ing which the young bucks imitated. At Windsor George III.'* 
had a cat's path — a sly early walk which the good old king took 
in the gray morning before his household was astir. What was 
the Corinthian path here recorded? Does any antiquary know? 

So the game of life proceeds, until Jerry Hawthorn, the rustic, 
is forced to go home, and the last picture represents him getting 
into the coach at the ** White Horse Cellar," he being one of six 
inside ; whilst his friends shake him by the hand ; whilst the 
sailor mounts on the roof; whilst the Jews hang round with 
oranges, knives, and sealing-wax: whilst the guard is closing 
the door. Where are they now, those sealing-wax vendors? 
where are the guards ? where are the jolly teams ? where are the 
coaches ? and where the youth that climbed inside and out of 
them ; that heard the merry horn which sounds no more ; that 
saw the sun rise over Stonehenge ; that rubbed away the bitter 
tears at night after parting as the coach sped on the journey to 
school and Loudon ; that looked out with beating heart as the 
milestones flew by, for the welcome corner where began home 
and holidays ? 

It is night now : and here is home. Gathered under the quiet 
roof elders and children lie alike at rest. In the midst of a great 
peace and calm, the stars look out from the heavens. The silence 
is peopled with the past; sorrowful remorses for sins and short- 
comings — memories of passionate joys and griefs rise out of their 
graves, both now alike calm and sad. Eyes, as I shut mine, look 
at me, that have long ceased to shine. The town and the fair 
landscape sleep under the starlight, wreathed in the autumn 
mists. Twinkling among the houses a light keej)s watch here 
and there, in what may be a sick chamber or two. The clock 
tolls sweetly in the silent air. Here is night and rest. An awful 

14. George HI.— Kins;: of England for sixty years, from 1760 to 1820. 



22 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

sense of thanks makes the heart swell, and the head bow, as I 
pass to my room through the sleeping house, and feel as though 
a hushed blessing were upon it. 



Nil Nisi Bonum. 
{Nothing Unless Good.) 

Almost the last words which Sir Walter Scott spoke to Lock- 
hart,^ his biographer, were, " Be a good man, my dear ! " and 
with the last flicker of breath on his dying lips, he sighed a fare- 
well to his family, and passed away ])lessing them. 

Two men,- famous, admired, beloved, have just left us, the 
Goldsmith and the Gibbon of our time. Ere a few weeks are 
over, many a critic's pen will be at work, reviewing their lives, 
and passing judgment on their works. This is no review, or his- 
tory, or criticism : only a word in testimony of respect and 
regard from a man of letters, who ow^es to his own professional 
labor tlie honor of becoming acquainted with these two eminent 
literary men. One was the first ambassador^ whom the New 
World of Letters sent to the Old. He was born almost with the 
republic; the pater patri(B\\Vid laid his hand'* on the child's head. 
He bore Washington's name : he came amongst us bringing the 
kindest sympathy, the most artless, smiling good-will. His new 
country could send us, as he showed in his own person, a gentle- 
man who, though himself born in no very high sphere, was most 
finished, polished, easy, witty, quiet; and, socially, the equal of 
the most refined Europeans. If Irving's welcome in England 



1. Irockhart. — John Gibson Lockhart (1784-1854), the son-in-law of Sir Wal- 
ter Scott and author of four novels and several biographies. His fame rests 
upon his Life of Sir Walter Scott. 

2. Two Men, etc.— Washinjrton Irving, "the Goldsmith of America," died 
November 28, 1859 ; Lord Macaulay, the distinguished essayist and historian, 
died Decembei- 28, 1859. 

3. First Ambassador.— Irving went abroad, at the close of the war of 1812, 
and remained for seventeen years. His Sketch Book., which gave him a national 
fame, was published in 1819. 

4. Laid his Hand.— A well-known incident in the childhood of Irving. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 23 

was a kind one, was it not also gratefully remembered i If he 
ate our salt, did he not pay us with a thankful heart ? Who can 
calculate the amount of friendliness and good feeling for cur 
country which this writer's generous and untiring regard for us 
disseminated in his own ? His books are read by millions ^ of 
his countrymen, whom he has taught to love England, and why 
to love her. It would have been easy to speak otherwise than 
he did : to inflame national rancors, which, at the time when 
he first becanie known as a public writer, war had just re- 
newed : to cry down the old civilization at the expense of the 
new : to point out our faults, arrogance, shortcomings, and give 
the republic to infer how much she was the parent state's supe- 
rior. There are writers enough in the United States, honest and 
otherwise, who preach that kind of doctrine. But the good Ir- 
ving, the peaceful, the friendly, had no place for bitterness in 
his heart, and no scheme but kindness. Received in England 
with extraordinary tenderness and friendship (Scott, Southey, 
Byron, a hundred others have borne witness to their liking for 
him), he was a messenger of good-will and peace between his 
country and ours. " See, friends ! " he seems to say, " these English 
are not so wicked, rapacious, callous, proud, as you have been 
taught to believe them. I went amongst them a humble man ; 
won my way by my pen ; and, when known, found every hand 
held out to me with kindliness and welcome. Scott is a great 
man, you acknowledge. Did not Scott's King of England give a 
gold medal to him, and another to me, your countryman, and a 
stranger ? " 

Tradition in the United States still fondly retains the history 
of the feasts and rejoicings which awaited Irving on his return 
to his native country from Europe. He had a national welcome ; 
be stammered in his speeches, hid himself in confusion, and the 
people loved him all the better. He had worthily represented 
America in Europe. In that young community a man who 
brings home with him abundant European testimonials is still 

5. Read by Millions.— Irving's writings enjoyed a remarkable pale during 
his lifetime. "Since the expiration of the copyright, various editions cheaply 
printed for popular use have had a large sale. 



84 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

treated with respect (I have found American writers, of wide- 
world reputation, strangely solicitous about the opinions of 
quite obscure British critics, and elated or depressed by their 
judgments) ; and Irving went home medaled by the King, 
diplomatized by the University, crowned and honored and 
admired. He had not in any way intrigued for his honors, he 
had fairly won them; and, in Irving's instance, as in others, the 
old country was glad and eager to pay them. 

In America the love and regard for Irving was a national senti- 
ment. Party wars are perpetually raging there, and are carried 
on by the press with a rancor and fierceness against individuals 
which exceed British, almost Irish, virulence. It seemed to me, 
during a year's travel '^ in the country, as if no one ever aimed a 
blow at Irving. All men held their hand from that harmless, 
friendly peacemaker. I had the good fortune to see him at New 
York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington,* and remarked 
how in every place he was honored and welcome. Every large 
city has its " Irving House." The country takes pride in the 
fame of its men of letters. The gate of his own charming little 
domain ^ on the beautiful Hudson River was forever swinging 
before visitors who came to him. He shut out no one.t I had 
seen many pictures of his house, and read descrij^tions of it, 
in both of which it was treated with a not unusual American 



6. Year's Travel.— Thackeray gave his lectures on the "Four Georges" and 
the "English Humorists" in this country. Mr. Fields has given a charming 
account of Thackeray's visit in his Yesterday with Authors. 

7. Little Domain.— After Irving's return from his long residence abroad, 
he bought the small stone cottage, the home of the Van Tassels, the " Roost" 
of the unfortunate Wolfert. This historic place became famous as " Sunnyside," 
the home of Irving's declining years. It is in the village of Tarrytown on the 
Hudson, some twenty-five miles from New York. 

* At Washington. Mr. Irving came to a lecture given by the writer, which Mr. 
Filmore and General Pierce, the President and President Elect, were also kind 
enough to attend together. " Two Kings of Bi-entford smelling at one rose," 
says Irving, looking up with his good-humored smile. 

t Mr. Irving described to me with that humor and good-humor which he 
always kept, how, amongst other visitors, a member of the British press who had 
carried his distinguished pen to America (where he employed it in vilifying his 
own country) came to Sunnyside, introduced himself to Irving, partook of his 
wine and luncheon, and in two days described Mr. Irving, his house, his 
nieces, his meal, and his manner of dozing afterwards, in a New York paper. 
On another occasion, Irving said, laughing, " Two persons came to me, and one 
held me in conversation whilst the other miscreant took my portrait !" 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 25 

It was but a pretty little cabin of a place ; the 
gentleman of the press who took notes of the place, whilst his 
kind old host was sleeping, might have visited the whole house 
in a couple of minutes. 

And how came it that this house was so small, when Mr. 
living's books were sold by hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, 
when his pro tits were known to be large, and the habits of life of 
the good old bachelor were notoriously modest and simple ? 
He had loved once^ in his life. The lady he loved died ; and he, 
whom all the world loved, never sought to replace her. I can't 
say how much the thought of that fidelity has touched me. 
Does not the very cheerfulness of his after life add to the pathos 
of that untold story? To grieve always was not in his nature; 
or, when he had his sorrow, to bring all the world in to condole 
with him and bemoan it. Deej) and quiet he lays the love of his 
heart, and buries it ; and grass and flowers grow over the scarred 
ground in due time. 

Irving had such a small house and such narrow rooms, because 
there was a great number of people to occupy them. He could 
only afford to keep one old horse (which, lazy and aged as it was, 
managed once or twice to run away with that careless old horse- 
man). He could only afford to give plain sherry to that amiable 
British paragraph-monger from New York, who saw the patriarch 
asleep over his modest, blameless cup, and fetched the public into 
his private chamljer to look at him. Irving could only live very 
modestly, because the wifeless, childless man had a number of 
children to whom he was as a father. He had as many as nine 
nieces, I am told — I saw two of these ladies at his house — with 
all of whom the dear old man had shared the produce of his 
labor and genius. 

" Be a good man, my dear I '' One can't but think of these last 
words of the veteran Chief of Letters, who had tasted and tested 
the value of worldly success, admiration, jDrosperity. Was 



8. Had loved onee, — lu his youth, Irving was betrothed to Matilda HolT- 
man. who died iu her eighteenth year. He remained faithful to her memory, 
and lier Bible, kept for so many years, was on a table at his bedside when lie 
died. 



26 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

Irving not good, and, ol' his works, was not his liiie the best part? 
In his family, gentle, generous, good-humored, aflfectionate, self- 
denying: in society, a delightful example of complete gentle- 
manhood ; quite unspoiled by prosperity ; never obsequious to 
the great (or, worse still, to the base and mean, as some public 
men are forced to be in his and other countries) ; eager to 
acknowledge every contemporary's merit; always kind and 
affable to the young members of his calling ; in his professional 
bargains and mercantile dealings delicately honest and grateful ; 
one of the most charming masters of our lighter language : the 
constant friend to us and our nation ; to men of letters doubly 
dear, not for his wit and genius merely, but as an examplar of 
goodness, probity and pure life:— I don't know what sort of tes- 
timonial will be raised to him in his own country, where gen- 
erous and enthusiastic ackuowledgment of American merit is 
never wanting: but Irving was in our service as well as theirs; 
and as they have placed a stone at Greenwich yonder in memory 
of that gallant young Bellot, who shared the perils and fate of 
some of our Arctic seamen, I would like to hear of some memo- 
rial raised by English writers and friends of letters in affectionate 
remembrance of the dear and good Washington Irving. 

As for the other writer, whose departure many friends, some 
few most dearly-loved relatives, and multitudes of admiring 
readers deplore, our republic has already decreed his statue, and 
he must have known that he had earned this posthumous honor. 
He is not a poet and a man of letters merely, but citizen, states- 
man, a great British worthy. Almost from the first moment 
when he appears, amongst boys, amongst college students, 
amongst men, he is marked, and takes rank as a great English- 
man. All sorts of successes are easy to him : as a lad ^ he goes 
down into the arena with others, and wins all the prizes to which 
he has a mind. A place in the senate is straightway offered to 
the young man. He takes his seat there; he speaks, when so 

9 Asa L,ad.— Wonderfnl stories are told of Macanlay's precocity. While a 
child he wrote a universal history and several historical poems of great lengrth. 
Before twenty-five, he had written his masterly essay on Milton, and at thirty 
was a member of Parliament. In 1834, Macaulay went to India as a member of 
the Supreme Council, an honorable and lucrative position. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 27 

minded, without party auger or intrigue, but not without party 
faith and a sort of heroic enthusiasm for his cause. Still he is 
poet and philosoj^her even more than orator. That he may 
have leisure and means to pursue his darling studies, he absents 
himself for a while, and accepts a richly-remunerative post in the 
East. As learned a man may live in a cottage or a college-com- 
mon-room ; but it always seemed to me that ami^le n^eans and 
recognized rank were Macaulay's as of right. Years ago there 
was a wretched outcry raised because Mr. Macaulay dated a let- 
ter from Windsor Castle, where he was staying. Immortal gods! 
Was this man not a fit guest for any palace in the world ? or a 
fit companion for any man or woman in it ? I dare say, after 
Austerlitz,^" the old K. K. court officials and footmen sneered at 
Napoleon for dating from Schonbrunn. But that miserable 
" Windsor Castle " outcry is an echo out of fast- retreating old- 
world remembrances. The place of such a natural chief was 
amongst the first of the land; and that country is best, according 
to our British noti(m at least, where the man of eminence has the 
best chance of investing his genius and intellect. 

If a company of giants were got together, very likely one or 
two of the mere six-feet-six people might be angry at the incon- 
testable superiority of the very tallest of the party ; and so I 
have heard some London wits, rather jDeevish at Macaulay's 
superiority, complain that be occui^ied too much of the talk, and 
so forth. Now that that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, 
will not many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance to 
listen ? To remember the talk is to wonder : to think not only 
of the treasures he had in his memory, but of the trifles he had 
stored there, and could j)roduce with equal readiness. Almojit 
on the last day I had the fortune to see him, a conversation liap- 
jjened suddenly to spring up about senior wranglers, and what 
they had done in after life. To the almost terror of the persons 
present, Macaulay began with the senior wrangler of 1801-2-3-4, 
and so on, giving the name of each, and relating his subsequent 

10. Austerlitz.— Celebrated as the place where Napoleon I., in December, 
1805, defeated the combined forces of Austria and Russia. Schonbruiin, a 
royal palace in the outskirts of Vienna, the summer residence of the imperial 
family. 



28 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

career and rise. Every man who has known him has his story 
regarding that astonishing memory." It may be that he was not 
ill-pleased that you should recognize it ; but to those prodigious 
intellectual feats, which were so easy to him, who would grudge 
his tribute to homage ? His talk was, in a word, admirable, and 
we admired it. 

Of the notices which have appeared regarding Lord Macaulay, 
up to the day when the present lines are written, the reader 
should not deny himself the pleasure of looking especially at 
two. It is a good sign of the times when such articles as these 
(I mean the articles in The Times and Saturday Heview) appear in 
our public prints about our public men. They educate us, as it 
were, to admire rightly. An uninstructed person in a museum 
or at a concert may pass by without recognizing a picture or a 
passage of music, which the connoisseur by his side may show 
him is a masterpiece of harmony, or a wonder of artistic skill. 
After reading these papers you like and respect more the person 
you have admired so much already. And so with regard to 
Macaulay's style there may be faults of course — what critic can't 
point them out ? But for the nonce we are not talking about 
faults : we want to say Jiil nisi honum. Well — take at hazard 
any three pages of the " Essays" or "History;" — and, glimmering 
below the narrative, as it were, you, an average reader, see one, 
two, three, a half-score of allusions to other historic facts, char- 
acters, literature, poetry, with vrhich you are acquainted. Why 
is this epithet used? Whence is that simile drawn ? How does 
he manage, in two or three words, to paint an individual or to 
indicate a landscape? Your neighbor, who lias 7iis reading, 
and his little stock of literature stowed away in his mind, shall 
detect more points, allusions, happy touches, indicating not only 
the 25rodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but the 
wonderful industry, the honest, humble j^revious toil of this 
great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence; he 
travels a hundred miles to make a line of description. 

11. Astonisliiiisj Memory.— Macaulay had a most remarkable memory, of 
which he was very proud. For other details see Trevelyan's Life of Macaulay^ 
vol. ii., chap. xi. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 29 

Many Londoners — not all — have seen the British Museum 
Library. I speak a cceur omert, and pray the kindly reader to 
bear with nie. I have seen all sorts of domes of Peters '^ and 
Pauls, Sophia, Pantheon,— what not?-- and have been struck by 
none of them so much as by that catholic dome in Bloomsbury, 
under which our million volumes are housed. What peace, what 
love, what truth, what beauty, what happiness for all, what gen- 
erous kindness for you and me, are here spread out ! It seems to 
me one cannot sit down in that place, without a heart full of 
grateful reverence. I own to have said my grace at the table, 
und to have thanked heaven for this my English birthright, 
freely to partake of these bountiful books, and to speak the 
truth I find there. Under the dome which held Macaulay's 
brain, and from which his solemn eyes looked out on the w orld 
]jut a fortnight since, what a vast, brilliant, and wonderful store 
of learning was ranged ! what strange lore would he not fetch 
for you at your bidding ! A volume of law or history, a book of 
poetry familiar or forgotten (except by himself who forgot noth- 
ing), a novel ever so old, and he had it at hand. I spoke to him 
once about " Clarissa." '^ "Not read ' Clarissa ! ' " he cried out. 
" If you have once thoroughly entered on ' Clarissa ' and are 
infected by it, you can't leave it. When I was in India I passed 
one hot season at the hills, and there were the Governor-General, 
and the Secretary of Government, and the Commander-in-Chief, 
and their wives. I had ' Clarissa ' with me ; and, as soon as they 
began to read, the whole station was in a passion of excitement 
about Miss Harlowe and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly 
Lovelace ! The Governor's vrife seized the book, and the Secre- 
tary waited for it, and the Chief Justice could not read it for 
tears 1 " He acted the whole scene : he paced up and down the 

12. Domes of Peter's, etc.— The dome of St. Pttor'!* church in Eome is 
195J feet in diameter, 50 feet wider and 64 feet higher than that of St. Paul's 
in London. Sophia, church and mosque of Constantinople, with a dome 175 
feet high. Pantheon, a Greek or Roman temple dedicated to all the gods. 
The Pantheon at Paris, celebrated for its fine dome, was built during the reign 
of Louis XIV. 

13. Clarissa.— Clariftsa Harlwve was written by Samuel Richardson (1680-1761). 
It is considered his best novel. Richardson's novels are of extraordinary 
length, and are rarely read at the present day. "Clarissa" was Macaulay's 
favorite romance. See Trevelyan, vol. 1, chap. xvi. 



30 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

" Athenaeum " library : I dare say lie could liave spoken pages 
of the book — of that book, and of what countless piles of others! 

In this little paper let us keep to the text of nil nisi lonuni. 
One paper I have read regarding Lord Macaulay says ''he had 
no heart " Why, a man's books may not ahvays speak the 
truth, but they speak his mind in spite of himself: and it seems 
to me this man's heart is beating through every page he penned. 
He is always in a storm of revolt and indignation against wrong 
craft, tyranny. How he cheers heroic resistance ; how he backs 
and applauds freedom struggling for its own; how he hates 
scoundrels, ever so victorious and successful ; how he recognizes 
genius, though selfish villains possess it! The critic who says 
Macaulay had no heart, might say that Johnson had none : and 
two men more generous, and more loving, and more hating, and 
more partial, and more noble, do not live in cur history. Those 
who knew Lord Macaulay knew how admirably tender and gen- 
erous and atfecti(mate he was. It was not his business to bring 
his family before the theatre footlights, and call for bouquets 
from the gallery as he wept over them. 

If any young man of letters reads this little sermon — and to 
him, indeed, it is addressed — I would say to him, " Bear Scott's 
words in your mind, and '•'be good, my dear.''''' Here are two 
literary men gone to their account, and Inus Deo, as far as we 
know, it is fair and open and clean. Here is no need of apologies 
for shortcomings, or explanations of vices which would have 
been virtuous but for unavoidable, etc. Here are two examples 
of men most differently gifted: each pursuing his calling; each 
speaking his truth as God bade him; each honest in his life ; 
just and irreproachable in his dealings; dear to his friends; 
honored by his country ; beloved at his fireside. It has been the 
fortunate lot of both to give incalculable haj)piness and delight 
to the world, which thanks them in return with an immense 
kindliness, respect, affection. It may not be our chance, brother 
scribe, to be endowed with such merit, or rewarded with such 
fame. But the rewards of these men are rewards paid to our 
service. We may not win the baton or epaulettes ; but God give 
us strength to guard the honor of the flao- ! 



ROUKDABOUT PAPERS. ' 31 

De Finibus. 

{Concetming Conclusions.) 

When Swift ' Mas in love with Stella, and despatching her a 
letter from London thrice a month by the Irish packet, you may 
remember how he would begin letter No. xxiii., we will say, on 
the very day when xxii. had been sent away, stealing out of the 
coffee-house or the assembly so as to be able to prattle with his 
dear; ''never letting go her kind hand, as it were," as some 
commentator or other has said in speaking of the Dean and his 
amour. When Dr. Johnson,-^ walking to Dodsley's, and touch- 
ing the posts in Pall Mall as he walked, forgot to pat the head 
of one of them, he went back and imposed his hands on it, — im- 
pelled I know not by what superstition. I have this I hope not 
dangerous mania too. As soon as a piece of work is out of hand, 
and before going to sleep, I like to begin another; it may be to 
write only half a dozen lines; but that is something towards 
Number the Next. The printer's boy has not yet reached Green 
Arbor Court ^ with the copy. Those people who were alive half 
an hour since, Pendennis,^ Clive Newcome, and (what do you 
call him? what was the name of the last hero? I remember 
now !) Philip Firmin, have hardly drunk their glass of wine, and 
the mammas have only this minute got the children's cloaks on, 
and have been bowed out of my premises — and here I come 
back to the study again. How lonely it looks now all these 
people are gone ! My dear good friends, some folks are utterly 



Nole,— The followincr sketch has reference to the conclusion of The Adven- 
tures of Philip, the last complete work of Thackeray. 

1. Swift— Stella,— Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), a racy and vigorous writer, 
author of G)fllive?''s Tmrels, was highly esteemed by Addison, Pope, and the 
great literary men of the time. His cruel rreatmcnt of two brilliant women, 
whom he has immortalized under the names of "Stella" and ''Vanessa," is one 
of the saddest episodes in literary biography. Swift was a great master of 
English, and his letters to "Stella" are models of good English. 

2. Dr. JTotinsoii. etc.— This well-known incident in the life of Dr. Johnson 
is given in Boswell's Life. Dodsley's was the name of a bookseller whose 
shop was a literary resort. Pall Mall.— .\ street of palaces and fashionable 
club houses in London. 

3. Green Arbor Court.— A court in London, frequent! v referred to in 
English literary history, especially in the days of Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. 

4. Peiidennis, Clive, etc.— Characters in Thackeray's best-known novels. 
Others are mentioned in the succeeding lines, 



32 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

tired of you, and say, " What a poverty of friends the man has ! 
He is always asking us to meet those Pendennises, Newcomes, 
and so forth. Why does he not introduce us to some new char- 
acters? Why is he not thrilling like Twostars, learned and pro- 
found like Threestars, exquisitely humorous and human like 
Fourstars ? Why, finally, is he not somebody else ? " My good 
people, it is not only impossible to j)lease you all, but it is ab- 
surd to try. The dish which one man devours, another dislikes. 
Is the dinner of to-day not to your taste ? Let us hope to-mor- 
row's entertainment will be more agreeable. * * j resume my 
original subject. What an odd, pleasant, humorous, melancholy 
feeling it is to sit in the study, alone and quiet, now all these 
people are gone who have been boarding and lodging with me 
for twenty months ! They have interrupted my rest : they have 
plagued me at all sorts of minutes: they have thrust themselves 
upon me when I was ill, or wished to be idle, and I have growled 
out a "Be hanged to you, can't you leave me alone now?" 
Once or twice they have prevented my going out to dinner. 
Many and many a time they have prevented my coming home, 
because I knew they were there waiting in the study, and a 
plague take them! and I have left home and family, and gone to 
dine at the Club, and told nobody where I went. They have 
bored me, those people. They have plagued me at all sorts 
of uncomfortable hours. They have made such a disturbance in 
my mind '" and house, that sometimes I have hardly known what 
was going on in my family, and scarcely have heard what my 
neighbor said to me. They are gone at last ; and you would 
expect me to be at ease? Far from it. I should almost be 
glad if Woolcomb w^ould walk in and talk to me: or Twysden 
reappear, take his place in that chair opposite me, and begin one 
of his tremendous stories. 

Madmen, you know, see visions, hold conversations with, even 
draw the likeness of, people invisible to you and me. Is this 
making of people out of fancy madness? and are novel-writers 



5. Disturbance in my Mind.- Dickens often said that his characters 
used to haunt him while he was writing? his novels. His story of the spell which 
bis Christmas Carol wove round him during its composition is well known. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 33 

at all entitled to straiglit-waistcoats ? I often forget people's 
names in life ; and in my own stories contritely own that I make 
dreadful blunders regarding them; but I declare with respect to 
the personages introduced into your humble servant's fables, I 
know the pepple utterly — I know the sound of their voices. A 
gentleman came in to see me the other day who was so like the 
picture of Philip Firmin in Mr. Walker's charming drawings in 
the Cornhill Magazine^ that he was quite a curiosity to me. The 
same eyes, beard, shoulders, just as you have seen them from 
month to month. Well, he is not like the Philip Firmin in my 
mind. Asleep, asleep in the grave, lies the bold, the generous, 
the reckless, the tender-hearted creature whom I have made to 
pass through those adventures which have just been brought to 
an end. It is years since I heard the laughter ringing, or saw 
the bright blue eyes. When I knew him both were 3'oung. I 
become young as I think of him. And this morning he was alive 
again in this room, ready to laugh, to fight, or to weep. As I 
write, do you know, it is the gray of the evening; the house is 
quiet; everybody is out; the room is getting a little dark, and I 
look rather wistfully up from the paper wdth perhaps ever so 

little fancy that he may come in. No? No movement. 

No gray shade, growing more palpable, out of which at last look 
the well-known eyes. No, the printer came and took him away 
\\\{\\ the last page of the i3roofs. And with the printer's boy 
did the whole cortege of ghosts flit away, invisible ? Ha! stay! 
what is this ? Angels and ministers of grace ! The door opens, 
and a dark form enters, bearing a black — a black suit of clothes. 
It is John, He says it is time to dress for dinner. 

Every man who has had his German tutor, and has been 
coached through the famous " Faust " of Goethe " (thou wert 
my instructor, good old Weissenborn, and these eyes beheld the 
great master himself in dear little Weimar town 1) has read those 

6. Goethe.— (1749— 1832). The acknowled2;ed prince of German poets and 
one of the mostly highly-gifted men of the eighteenth century. "Faust" was 
his masterpiece. The charming verses referred to are in the Dedication, and 
thus begin : 

Dim forms, ye hover near, a shadowy train, 
As erst upon my troubled sight ye stole. 



34 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

charming verses -wliicli are prefixed to the drama, in which the 
poet reverts to the time when his work was first composed, and 
recalls the friends now departed, who once listened to his song. 
The dear shadows rise up around him, he says; he lives in the 
past again. It is to-day which appears vague and visionary. 
We humbler writers cannot create Fausts or raise up monumental 
works that shall endure for all ages ; but our books are diaries, 
in which our own feelings must of necessity be set down. As we 
look to the page written last month, or ten years ago, we remem- 
ber the day and its events ; the child ill, mayhap, in the adjoin- 
ing room, and the doubts and fears which racked the brain as it 
still pursued its work ; the dear old friend who read the com- 
mencement of the tale, and whose gentle hand shall be laid in 
ours no more. I own for my part that, in reading 2)ages which 
this hand penned formerly, I often lose sight of the text under 
my eyes. It is not the words I see ; but that past day ; that by- 
gone page of life's history ; that tragedy, comedy it may be, 
which our little home company was enacting; that merry-making 
which we shared; that funeral which we followed; that bitter, 
bitter grief which we buried. 

Another Finis written. Another mile-stone passed on this 
journey from birth to the next world ! Sure it is a subject for 
solemn cogitation. Shall we continue this stoi-y- telling business, 
and be voluble to the end of our age ? Will it not be presently 
time, O prattler, to hold your tongue, and let younger people 
speak ? I have a friend, a painter, who, like other persons who 
shall be nameless, is growing old. He has never painted with 
such laborious finish as his works now show. This master is still 
the most humble and diligent of scholars. Of Art, his mistress, 
he is a.w^ays an eager, reverent pupil. In his calling, in yours, 
in mine, industry and humility will help and comfort us. A 
word with you. In a pretty large experience I have not found 
the men who write books superior in wit or learning to those 
who don't write at all. In regard of mere information, non- 
writers must often be superior to writers. You don't expect a 
lawyer in full practice to be conversant with all kinds of litera- 
ture ; he is too busy with his law ; and so a writer is commonly 



EOUxnAHorr paim-us. 35 

too busy with his own books to bo able to bestow attention on 
tlie works of otlier jieople. After a day's work I march to the 
Club, proposing to improve my mind and keep iijy8</it' " posted 
up,'' as the ArDerioans phrase it, with the literature of the day. 
And what liappens? Given, a walk after luncheon, a pleasing 
book, and a most comfortable arm-chair by the fire, and you 
know the rest. A (]oze ensues. Pleasing book drops suddenly, 
is picked up once with an air of s^)me confusion, is laid presently 
softly in lap: head falls on comfortable arm-chair cushion: eyes 
close: soft nasal music is heard. Am I telling Club secrets^ 
Of afternoons, after lunch, I say, scores of sensible fogies have a 
doze. Perhaps I have fallen asleep over that very book to which 
"Finis" has just been written. "And if the writer sleeps, what 
happens to the rearlers ''. '' says Jones, coming down upon me 
with his lightning wit. What ? You did sleep over it ? And a 
very good thing too. These eyes have more than once seen a 
friend dozing over pages which this hand has written. There is 
a vignette somewhere in one of my books of a friend so caught 
napping with " Pendennis,'' or the "Newcomes," in his lap; and 
if a writer can give you a sweet-soothing, harmless sleep, has he 
not done you a kindness ? So is the author who excites and 
interests you worthy of your thanks and benedictions. I am 
troui)led with fever and ague, that seizes me at odd intervals and 
prostrates me for a day. In one or two of these fits I have read 
novels with the most fearful contentment of mind. Once on the 
Mississippi, it was my dearly beloved "Jacob Faithful,"' once at 
Frankfort O. M., the delightful "Vingt Ans Apres" of Monsieur 
Dumas: once at Tunbridge Wells, the thrilling "Woman in 
White: " and these books gave me amusement from morning till 
sunset. I remember those ague fits with a great deal of pleasure 
and gratitude. Think of a whole day in bed. and a good novel 
for a companion. Xo cares : no remorse about idleness : no visi- 
tors : and the Woman in White or the Chevalier d'Artagnan to 
tell me stories from dawn to night ! " Please, ma'am, my mas- 

7. "Jacob Faithfnl," etc.— One of Capt. Marryatt's popular sea novelB. 
"Vinsrt An>: \pres," '* Twentv Year?* Afte.'-.'" the. title of one of Duma>-' ro- 
mance^. '• Woman in White.""' one of Wilkie CoUins's highly-» roagbt novela. 
Tunbridge WelU, a faj^hionable En»li.-ih watering-plac«r. 



36 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

ter's compliments, and can he have. the third volume? "® (This 
message was sent to an astonished friend and neighbor who lent 
me, volume by volume, the W. in W.) How do you like your 
novels ? I like mine strong, " hot with,'' and no mistake : nc 
love-making : no observations about society : little dialogue 
except whe]-e the characters are bullying each other : plenty ol' 
lighting : and a villain in the cu^jboard, who is to suffer tortures 
just before Finis. I don't like your melancholy Finis. I never 
read the history of a consumptive heroine twice. In the story of 
Piiilip, just come to an end, I have the permission of the author 
to state that he was going to drown the two villains of the piece 

— a certain Dr. F and a certain Mr. T. H on board 

the " President " ^ or some other tragic ship — but you see I 
relented. I pictured to myself Firmin's ghastly face, amid the 
crowd of shuddering people on that reeling deck ni the lonely 
ocean, and thought, '• Thou ghastly lying wretch, thou shalt not 
be drowned ; thou shalt have a fever only ; a knowledge of thy 
danger; and a chance — ever so small a chance — of repentance." 
I wonder whether he did repent when he found himself in the 
yellow-fever, in Virginia? The probability is, he fancied that 
his son had injured him very much, and forgave him on his 
death-bed. Do you imagine there's a great deal of genuine right- 
down remorse in the world ? Don't people rather find excuses 
which make their minds easy ; endeavor to prove to themselves 
that they have been lamentably belied and misunderstood ; and 
try and forgive the persecutors who toill present that bill when 
it is due; and not bear malice against the cruel ruffian who takes 
them to the police-office for stealing the spoons ? 

Alexandre Dumas '" describes himself, when inventing the 
plan of a work, as lying silent on his back for two whole days on 
the deck of a yacht in a Mediterranean port. At the end of the 
two days he arose and called for dinner. In those two days he 

8. Third Volume.— English publishers commonlv publish novels in three 
volumes at a price which would be considered exorbitant in this country. 

9. '* President."— The steamer " President " sailed March 11, 1841, from New 
York for Liverpool with many passengers on board. The vessel encountered a 
terrific storm two days after lea^'ing port and was never seen afterwards. 

10. Alexander Dumas.— 1803-1870. A celebrated French novelist, author 
of C'mmt of Monte Cristo, La Reine Margot, etc. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 37 

had built his plot. He had moulded a mighty clay, to be cast 
presently in perennial brass. The chapiters, the characters, the 
incidents, the combinations were all arranged in the artist's 
brain ere he set a pen to paper. My Pegasus won't fly, so as to 
let me survey the iield below me. He has no wings, he is blind 
of one eye certainiy, he is restive, stubborn, slow ; crops a hedge 
when he ought to be galloj^ing, or gallops when he ought to be 
quiet. He never will show ofi:' when I want him. Sometimes, 
he goes at a pace which surprises me. Sometimes, when I 
most wish him to make the running, the brute turns restive, 
and I am obliged to let him take his own time. I wonder 
do other novel-writers experience this fatalism ? They mud go a 
certain way, in spite of themselves. I have been surprised at the 
observations made by some of my characters. It seems as if an 
occult Power was moving the pen. The personage does or says 
something, and I ask, how did he come to think of that ? Every 
man has remarked in dreams, the vast dramatic power which is 
sometimes evinced ; I won't say the surprising power, for noth- 
ing does surprise you in dreams. But those strange characters 
you meet make instant observations of which you never can have 
thought previously. In like manner, the imagination foretells 
things. We spake anon of the inflated style of some writers. 
What also if there is an afflated style — , when a writer is like a 
Pythoness on her oracle tripod, and mighty words, words which 
he cannot help, come blowing and bellowing and whistling and 
moaning through the speaking pipes of his bodily organ. I have 
told you it was a very queer shock to me the other day when, 
with a letter of introduction in his hand, the artist's (not my) 
Philip Firmin walked into this room, and sat down in the chair 
opposite. In the novel of " Pendennis," written ten years ago, 
there is an account of a certain Costigan, whom I had invented 
(as I suppose authors invent their personages out of scrajDs, heel- 
taps, odds and ends of characters). I was smoking in a tavern 
parlor one night — and this Costigan came into the room alive — 
the very man : — the most remarkable resemblance of the printed 
sketches of the man, of the rude drawings in which I had de- 
picted him. He had the same little coat, the same battered hat, 



38 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 

cocked on one eye, the same twinkle in that eye. " Sir,'' said I, 
knowing him to be an old friend whom I had met in unknown 
regions, "sir," I said, ''may I olfer you a glass of brandy-and- 
water ? " " Bedad^ ye may^' says he, " and I'll sing ye a song tu.''' 
Of course he spoke with an Irish brogue. Of course he had 
been in the army. In ten minutes he j)ulled out an Army Agent's 
account, whereon his name was written. A few months after we 
read of him in a jjolice court. How had I come to know him, to 
divine him ? Nothing shall convince me that I have not seen 
that man in the world of spirits. In the world of spirits-and- 
water I know I did : but that is a mere quibble of words. I 
was not surprised when he spoke in an Irish brogue. I had had 
cognizance of him before somehow. Who has not felt that little 
shock which arises when a person, a place, some words in a book 
present themselves to you, and you know that you have before 
met the same person, words, scene, and so forth ? 

They used to call the good Sir Walter the " Wizard of the 
North." What if some writer should appear who can write so 
enclianUngly that he shall be able to call into actual life the 
people whom he invents? What if Mignon," and Margaret, and 
Goetz von Berlichingen '" are alive now (though I don't say they 
are visible), and Dugald Dalgetty '^ and Ivanhoe were to step in 
at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose 
Uncas^* and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide silent 
in? And dearest Amelia Booth, ^^ on Uncle Toby's arm; and 

11. Mijsiioii.— A beautiful Italian jjirl in love with Wilhelm, her protector, a 
character in Goethe's Wilhelm 3Ieicfer'i> Apprenticeship. Marj^aret, the hero- 
ine of Goethe's Faust. 

12. Goetz von Bevlicliiugen, or Gottfried of the Iron Hand, a warlike 
hero of the sixteenth century. Goethe had made him the title and subject of 
an historical drama. 

13. Dugald Daljfetty.— One of Scott's great characters, from his novel of 
The Legend of Montrose. Ivanhoe, the hero of Scott's novel of the same 
name. 

14. Uucas.—Deerfoot. A character introduced into three of Cooper's novels, 
viz.. The Last of the MoTncans, The Pathfinder (md The Pioneer. Leatlier 
Stocking, nicliname of Natty Bnmppo, in Cooper's novel of The Pioneer. 

15. Amelia Booth,— The heroine and model of conjugal affection in Field- 
ing's novel of Amelia. Dr. Johnson called her the most pleasing heroine of all 
the romances. Uncle Tol>>% a quaint character from Sterne's Tn.^fram 
Shandy. Tiltlebat Titmouse, a linen draper's apprentice who had come 
into a large fortune, a character in Warren's Ten Thousand a Year. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 39 

Titlebat Titmouse, with his hair dyed green ; and all the Crum- 
mies ""' company of comedians, with the Gil Bias troop; and Sir 
Roger de Coverley; and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the 
Knight of La Mancha, with his blessed squire ? I say to you, I 
look rather wistfully towards the window, musing upon these 
people. Were any of them to enter, I think I should not be very 
much frightened. Dear old friends, what pleasant hours I have 
had with them! We do not see each other very often, but when 
we do we are ever happy to meet. I had a capital half-hour 
-with Jacob Faithful last night ; when the last sheet was corrected, 
when " Finis " had been written, and the ijrinter's boy, with the 
copy, was safe in Green Arbor Court. 

So you are gone, little printer's boy, with the last scratches 
and corrections on the proof, and a fine flourish by way of Finis 
at the story's end. The last corrections ? I say those last cor- 
rections seem never to be finished. A plague upon the Aveeds ! 
Every day, when I walk in my own little literary garden-plot, I 
spy some, and should like to have a spud,'' and root them out. 
Those idle words, neighbor, are past remedy. That turning back 
to the old pages produces anything but elation of mind. Would 
you not pay a pretty fine to be able to cancel some of them ? 
Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages! Oh, the cares, the 
ennui, the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over 
and over again ! But now and again a kind thought is recalled, 
and now and again a dear memory. Yet a few chapters more, 
and then the last : after which, behold Finis itself come to an 
end, and the Infinite begun. 

16. Crummies Codipaiiy.— An itiKerant theatrical company described in 
Dickens's Nichola Nickleby. Gil Bias, a celebrated Spanish novel by Le Sage. 
Sir Roj^er tie Coverley, the grand old English knight who figures in Ad^li- 
son's Spectator. K.i»ij?lit of L*a Manclia, Don Quixote, the liero of Cervan- 
tes's romance of the same name. Sancho Panza was his " blessed squire." 

17. Spud. — Dan. spyd, a spear; coincides with spit. A tool somewhat like a 
chisel, with a long handle, used by farmers for destroying weeds. 



40 ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 



On Letts's Diary. 

Mine is one of your No. 12 diaries, three shillings cloth 
boards; silk limp, gilt edges, three-and-six; French morocco, 
tuck ditto, four-and six. It has two pages, ruled with faint lines 
for memoranda, for every week, and a ruled account at the end, 
for the twelve months from January to December, where you may 
set down your incomings and your expenses. I hope yours, my 
respected reader, are large ; that there are many fine round sums 
of figures on each side of the page : liberal on the expenditure 
side, greater still on the receipt. I hope, sir, you will be " a bet- 
ter man," as they say, in '62 than in this moribund '61, whose 
career of life is just coming to its terminus. A better man in 
purse ? in body? in soul's health ? Amen, good sir, in all. Who 
is there so good in mind, body or estate, but bettering won't still 
be good for him ? O unknown Fate, presiding over next year, 
if you will give me better health, a better appetite, a better di- 
gestion, a better income, a better temper in '62 than you have 
bestowed in '61, I think your servant will be the better for the 
changes. For instance, I should be the better for a new coat. 
This one, I acknowledge, is very old. The family says so. My 
good friend, who amongst us would not be the better if he would 
give up some old habits ? Yes, yes. You agree with rae. You 
take the allegory ? Alas ! at our time of life we don't like to 
give up those old habits, do we ? It is ill to change. There is 
the good old loose, easy, slovenly bedgown, laziness, for example. 
What man of sense likes to fling it off and put on a tight prim 
dress-coat that pinches him ? There is the cozy wraprascal, self- 
indulgence — how easy it is ! How warm ! How it always seems 
to fit ! You can walk out in it ; you can go down to dinner in 
it. It is a little slatternly— it is a good deal stained — it isn't be- 
coming — it smells of cigar-smoke ; but — let the world call me 
idle and sloven. I love my ease better than my neighbor's opin- 
ion. I live to please myself; not you, Mr. Dandy, with your 
supercilious airs. I am a philosopher. Perhaps I live in my tub,' 

1. In my Tul>,— Diogenes, the Greek philosopher, is said to have lived in a 
tub. 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 41 

and don't make any other use of it . We won't pursue 

further this unsavory metajDhor. 

Ah me ! Every person who turns this page over has his own 
little diary, in j^aper or ruled in his memory tablets, and in which 
are set down the transactions of the now dying year. Boys and 
men, we have our calendar, mothers and maidens. For example, 
in your calendar j^ocket-book, my good Eliza, what a sad, sad 
day that is — how fondly and bitterly remembered — when your 
boy went off to his regiment, to India, to danger, to battle per- 
haps. What a day was that last day at home, when the tall 
brother sat yet amongst the family, the little ones round about 
him wondering at saddle-boxes, uniforms, sword- cases, gun-cases, 
and other wondrous apparatus of war and travel which poured 
in and filled the hall ; the new dressing-case for the beard not 
yet grown; the great sword-case at which little brother Tom 
looks so admiringly ! What a dinner that was, that last dinner, 
when little and grown children assembled together, and all tried 
to be cheerful ! What a night was that last night, when the 
young ones were at roost for the last time together under the 
same roof, and the mother lay alone in her chamber counting the 
fatal hours as they tolled one after another, amidst her tears, her 
watching, her fond prayers. What a night that was, and yet 
how quickly the melancholy dawn came ! Only too soon the sun 
rose over the houses. And now in a moment more the city 
seemed to wake. The house begun to stir. The family gathers 
together for the last meal.' For the last time in the midst of 
,them the widow kneels amongst her kneeling children, and falters 
a prayer in which she commits her dearest, her eldest born, to 
the care of the Father of all. O night, what tears you hide — 
what prayers you hear! And so the nights pass and the days 
succeed, until that one comes when tears and parting shall be no 
more. 

In your diary, as in mine, there are days marked with sadness, 
not for this year onlj', but for all. On a certain day — and the 
sun, perhaps, shining ever so brightly — the house-mother comes 
down to her family with a sad face, which scares the children 
round about in the midst of their laughter and prattle. They 



4:2 KOUNDABOUT PAPEKS. 

may have forgotten — but she has not — a day which came, twenty 
years ago it may be, and which she remembered only too well : 
the long night-watch ; the dreadful dawning and the rain beating 
at the pane ; the infant speechless, but moaning in its little crib; 
and then the awful calm, the awful smile on the sweet cherub 
face, when the cries have ceased, and the little suffering breast 
heaves no more. Then the children, as they see their mother's 
face, remember this was the day on which their little brother 
died. It was before they were born: but she remembers it. 
And as they pray together, it seems almost as if the spirit of the 
little lost one was hovering round the group. So they pass 
away : friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, grown jDeople, aged, 
infants. As we go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are 
grave-stones, and on each more and more names are written ; 
unless haply you live beyond man's common age, when friends 
have dropped off, and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you 
reach the terminus alone. 

In this past year's diary is there any precious day noted on 
which you have made a new friend ? This is a piece of good 
fortune bestowed but grudgingly on the old. After a certain age 
a new friend is a wonder, like Sarah's child. ^ Aged persons are 
seldom capable of bearing friendships. Do you remember how 
warmly you loved Jack and Tom when you were at school ; what 
a passionate regard you had for Ned when you were at college, 
and the immense letters you wrote each other? How often do 
you write, now that postage costs nothing? There is the age of 
blossoms and sweet budding green : the age of generous summer ; 
the autumn when the leaves drop ; and then winter, shivering 
and bare. Quick, children, and sit at my feet : for they are cold, 
very cold: and it seems as if neither wine nor worsted will 
warm 'em. 

In this past year's diary is there any dismal day noted in which 
you have lost a friend? In mine there is. I do not mean by 
death. Those who are gone you have. Those who departed 
loving you, love you still ; and you love them always. They are 

2. Sarah's Child Sarah, the wife of the patriarch, Abraham, bare him in 

her old age Isaac, " the child of promise." See Genesis, ch. xii— xxiii. 



KOUNDABOUT PAPERS. 43 

i»ot really gone, those dear hearts and true ; they are only gone 
into the next room ; and you will presently get up and follow 
them, and yonder door will close upon you^ and you will be no 
more seen. 



The Last Sketch. 

Not many days since I went to visit a house where in former 
years I had received many a friendly welcome. We went into 
the owner's — an artist's — studio. Prints, pictures and sketches 
hung on the walls as I had last seen and remembered them. The 
implements of the painter's art were there. The light which 
had shone upon so many, many hours of patient and cheerful toil, 
poured through the northern window upon print and bust, lay 
figure and sketch, and upon the easel before which the good, the 
gentle, the beloved Leslie ^ labored. In this room the busy brain 
had devised, and che skilful hand executed, I know not how 
many of the noble works which have delighted the world with 
their beauty and charming humor. Here the i3oet called up into 
pictorial presence, and informed with life, grace, beauty, infinite 
friendly mirth ancl wondrous naturalness of expression, the 
people of whom his dear books told him the stories, — his Shak- 
speare, his Cervantes, his Moliere, his Le Sage. There was his 
last svork on the easel — a beautiful fresh smiling shape of Titania, 
such as his sweet guileless fancy imagined the Midsummer NigMs 
queen to be. Gracious, and pure, and briglijt, the sweet smiling 
image glimmers on the canvas. Fairy elves, no doubt, were to 
have been grouped around their mistress in laughing clusters. 
Honest Bottom's grotesque head and form are indicated as 
reposing by the side of the consummate beauty. The darkling 
forest would have grown around them, with the stars glittering 
from the midsummer sky : the flowers at the queen's feet, and the 
boughs and foliage about her, would have been peopled with 



1. The beloved Leslie.— Charles Robert Leslie (1794-1859), a (listinguished 
English artii^t, whose principal pictures are emboeliments of scenes from the 
works of great classical authors— Shakspeare, Cervantes, and Fielding. 



44 ROUIS-D ABOUT PAPERS. 

gamboling sprites and fays. They were dwelling in tbe artist's 
mind no doubt, and would bave been develojDed by that patient, 
faitbful, a(bnirable genius : but tbe busy brain stopped working, 
tbe skillul band fell lifeless, tbe loving, bonest heart ceased to 
beat. Wbat was she to bave been — that fair Titania — wben per- 
fected by the patient skill of tbe poet, wbo in imagination saw 
the sweet innocent figure, and witb tender courtesy and caresses, 
as it were, posed and shaped and traced tbe fair form ? Is tbere 
record kept anywbere of fancies conceived, beautiful, unborn? 
Some day will they assume form in some yet undeveloped light ? 
If our l)ad unspoken tboughts are registered against us, and are 
written in tbe awful account, will not tbe good thoughts un- 
spoken, tbe love and tenderness, the pity, beauty, charity, wbicb 
pass tbrougb tbe breast, and cause tbe beart to tbrob witb silent 
good, find a remembrance too? A few weeks more, and this 
lovely offspring of the poet's conception would bave been com- 
plete — to charm tbe world witb its beautiful mirth. May tbere 
not be some sphere unknown to us where it may bave an exist- 
ence ? They say our words, once out of our lips, go traveling in 
omne OBVum^^ reverberating for ever and ever. If our words, wby 
not our tboughts ? If tbe Has Been, wby not tbe Migbt Plave 
Been ? 

Some day our sj^irits may be permitted to walk in galleries of 
fmcies more wondrous and beautiful than any achieved works 
wbicb at present we see, and our minds to behold and delight in 
masterpieces which jDoets' and artists' minds bave fatbered and 
conceived only. 

Witb a feeling mucb akin to that witb wbicb I looked upon 
tbe friend's — the admirable artist's— untinished work, I can fancy 
many readers turning to tbe last pages wbicb were traced by 
Charlotte Bronte's'^ baud. Of the multitude that have read ber 
books, wbo bas not known and deplored tbe tragedy of ber 

2. Cliarlotte Bronte.— A distinguished novelist (1816-1855), iiiarle famous 
by her novel of Jane Eyre, published in 184'?. Her two sisters, Emily and Anne, 
also wrote several works of fiction, now rarely read. Charlotte inarried her 
father's curate. Mr. Nicholls. Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte is a stan- 
dard biography. These gifted sisters were great admirers of Thackeray's 
writings. 

* For ftU ticxe, 



ROUNDABOUT PAPERS. 45 

family, her own most sad and untimely fate ? Which of her 
readers has not become her friend ? Who that has known her 
books has not admired the artist's noble English, the burning 
love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation at 
wrong, the eager sympathy, the pious love and reverence, the 
passionate honor, so to speak, of the woman ? What a story is 
that of that family of poets in their solitude yonder on the 
gloomy northern moors ! At nine o'clock at night, Mrs. Gaskell 
tells, after evening prayers, when their guardian and relative had 
gone to bed, the three poetesses — the three maidens, Charlotte, 
and Emily, and Anne — Charlotte being the " motherly friend 
and guardian to the other two" — began, like restless wild ani- 
mals, to pace up and down their parlor, 'making out' their 
wonderful stories, talking over plans and jDrojects, and thoughts 
of what was to be their future life. 

One evening, at the close of 1854, as Charlotte Nicholls sat 
with her husband by the fire, listening to the howling of the 
wind about the house, she suddenly said to her husband, " If 
you had not been with me, I must have been writing now." She 
ran up stairs, and brought down, and read aloud, the beginning 
of a new tale. When she had finished, her husband remarked, 
" The critics will accuse you of repetition." She replied, " Oh ! 
I shall alter that. I always begin two or three times before I ' 
can please myself." But it was not to be. The trembling little 
hand was to write no more. The heart newly awakened to love 
and happiness, and throbbing with maternal hope, was soon to 
cease to beat; that intrepid outspeaker and champion of truth, 
that eager, imj)etuous redresser of wrong, was to be called out 
of the world's fight and struggle, to lay down the shining arms, 
and to be removed to a sphere where even a noble indignation 
cor uUerius nequit lacemre^^ and where truth complete, and right 
triumphant, no longer need to wage war. 

I can only say of this lady, Dtdi tantum.-\ I saw her first just 
as I rose out of an illness from which I had never thought to 
recover. I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, 

* Was no longer able to rend her heart. t I have merely seen her. 



46 ROUKDABOUT PAPERS. 

the great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to 
characterize the woman. Twice I recollect she took me to task 
for what she held to be errors in doctrine. Once about Fielding ^ 
we had a disputation, She spoke her mind out. She jumped 
too ra]3idly to conclusions. She formed conclusions that might 
be wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. 
New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, 
indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, 
and especially spied out arrogance or affectation, with extraor- 
dinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favorites if 
their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she 
seemed to me to be judging the London folk prematurely : but 
perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged. I fancied an 
austere little Joan of Arc * marching in upon us, and rebuking 
our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of 
being a very j)ure, and lofty, and high-minded person. A great 
and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her 
always. Such, in our brief interview, she appeared to me. As 
one thinks of that life so noble, so lonely — of that passion for 
truth— of those nights and nights of eager study, swarming 
fancies, invention, depression, elation, prayer ; as one reads the 
necessarily incomplete, though most touching and admirable 
history of the heart that throbbed in this one little frame — of 
this one amongst the myriads of souls that have lived and died 
on this great earth — this great earth ? — this little speck in the 
infinite universe of God, — with what wonder do we think of 
to-day, with what awe await to-morrow, when that which is now 
but darkly seen shall be clear! As I read this little fragmentary 
sketch, I think of the rest. Is it? And where is it? Will not 
the leaf be turned some day, and the story be told ? Shall the de- 
viser of the tale somewhere perfect the history of little Emma's ^ 
griefs and troubles ? Shall Titania come forth complete with her 



3. Fielding.— Henry Fielding (1707-1754), the famous Englisli novelist. 

4. Joan of Ave.— Known as the " Maid of Orleans," born in 1412, and burnt 
at the stake in 1431. 

5. Iiittle Emma,— Like Thackeray and Dickens, Charlotte Bronte left a 
work unfinished by her sudden death. 



ROTTNDABOUT PAPERS. 47 

sportive court, with the flowers at her feet, the forest around her, 
and all the stars of summer glittering overhead ? 

How well I remember the delight, and wonder, and pleasure 
with which I read " Jane Eyre," sent to me by an author whose 
name and sex were then alike unknown to me; the strange 
fascinations of the book ; and how with my own work pressing 
upon me, I could not, having taken the volumes up, lay them 
down until they were read through! Hundreds of those who, 
like myself, recognized and admired that master- work of a great 
genius, will look with a mournful interest and regard and curi- 
osity upon the last fragmentary sketch from the noble hand 
which wrote "Jane Eyre." 



SELECTIONS FROM THACKERAY TO COMMIT TO MEMORY. 

Was ibere erer a better chariiy sermoE preached in the woiid than Dkkens's 
*'CSirisiiiMis Carol '' S 



The heft hirmor is thai which coIl:AiIl^ laosi hamaiirrT— flsat •which i« flarored 
thron^houi with ifindemest and kiDdDer-t. 



SoJEZ people cannot drir.? : : L^; : -rrs - :-.i. f :z: Lor^-ef. and others can reach 
the goal on foot. 



-of 

: h-s 



Ui ober. . zji to nean. loiiow n throng nie I 



Tn^rKE : - r - to be smtlemen bett^- than Josqih Addij-or . 

.r ' ' - " ^<oas to oar no^bors : 

f.- _ 7 IB tiestii^ his <^ipo- 



Hati not Toti. hare rot L s'.I c f -?. res-rr. : o be t'har.kful to ihis kind fiiend. 
Charles Dickens, irbo ha- -cothed si.c champed ?o elset hours: bron^t 
pleasure and sweet la-ri-:rr -.o -o marj i.oii:er : made such miiltirades of chil- 
dren happy : endowed n^ T,-::h -lici: a ? .^ ert store of gxacioas ihotights. fair fan- 
cies, soft srmpatlaes, hrarry -:_: ;y:nei.:s * 



Thtsk of him ^Olrrra- Goldsnaith). reckless. thrif-Ir-^. v-:- f t.- like— bot 
meiaful, gentle, generous. foD of lore and pity. He : ^ rs -: :' onr life, and 
£oe& to render his account beyond it. Think <rf the poor pensioners weeping at 
his glare ; think of the nohle spirits that admired and deplored him ; thmk of 
the r^teoaepen that wrote his ^itaph— and ot the -wondaW and munimo os 
regpoBK of aiiection with which ii»e woiM has pud hack the loreheieare it. 
ms bmnor delisfalinz us stiE; his eonff fredi and bentifal as when firet he 
dunned with it: hiswoidsinaD ourmoaths; hisTery w^eakneseesbelof^dand 
ftmi&r-his beoerolent spirit etffl seaoris to anile nponiK: to do gentle kind- 
nes^s : to Eoocoor wifli sweet charity: to soothfC, cmresB, and fofgrre: to pfc»d 
with the fottanatc for flic nnhappy and the poor. 



: LANGUAGE LESSONS-GRAMMAR-COMPOSITION. 
A Complete Course in Two Books Only. 



1. GI\ADED LESSONS IN ENGLISH. 

168 pages, IGmo. Bound in linen. 

2. HIGHEi^ LESSONS IN ENGLISH. 

288 pages, 16mo. Bound in cloth. 

By Aloxzo Reed, A.M., Instructor in Englisli Grammar in Brook- 
lyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute ; and Brainerd Kellogg, 
A.M., Professor of English Language and Literature in Brooklyn 
Collegiate and Polvtechnic Institute. 



TWELVE POINTS WHEBEIN WE CLAIM THESE WORKS TO EXCEL. 

JPIan.— The science of the language is made tributary to the a-t of expression. 
Every principle is flxed in memory and in practice, by an exhaus\iv« drill in com- 
posing sentences, arranging and rearranging their parts, contract \ng, expanding, 
punctuating, and criticisuig them. There is thus given a complete course in <ecA- 
nicul yranunar ajid composition, more thorougii and attractive than 't each subject 
were treated separately. 

(iraminar and Composition taught togetJier.^V^e claim thit grammar 
and composition can be better and more economically taught together than sepa- 
rately ; that each helps the other and furnishes the occasion to teach tne other ; and 
that btUh can be taught together in the time that would be required for either alone. 

A Complete Course ti* Grammar and Coniposition,in only two Books. 
—The two books completely cover the ground of grammar and composition, from 
the time the scholar usually begins the study until it is finished in the High School or 
Academy. 

3Tet'hod.—The author's method in teaching In these books is as follows : d) The 
principles are presented inductively in the "Hints for Oral Instruction." (2) This 
instruction is carefully gathered up in brief definitions for the pupil to memorize. 
(3) A variety of exercises in analysis, pairing, and composition is giv&n. which im- 
press tlie principles on the mind oif the scholar and compel him to understand them. 

Authors— l*ractit.al Tfacher«.— The books were prepared b.v men who have 
made a life-work of teaching grammar and composition, and both of them occupy 
high positions in their profession. 

Grading. —yio pains have been spared in grading the books so as to afTord the 
least possible difficulty \o \he young student. This is very important and could 
Bcarcelv be accomplished by any who are not practical teachers. 

Definitions.— The definitions, principles, and rules are stated in the same lan- 
jfuage in both bonks, and cannot be excelled. 

Models for JP«r«inflf.— The models for parsing are simple, original and worthy 
of careful attention. 

Si/stem of Di a gratns.— The system of div".grams. although it forms no vital part 
of the works, is the best extant. Tlie advantage of the use of diagrams is : (1) They 
present the analysis to the eye. (2) They are ttinmlating and helpful to the pupil in 
the preparation of his lessons. (3^ They enable the teacher to examine the work qf 
a class in about the time he could exaruine one pupil, if the oral method alone were 
used. 

Sentences for A n.ah/.<iis. — Tlie sentences for analysis have been selected with 
great (,'f>.re and are of tuiusual excellence. 

Questions and J?f>nV»r.v.— There is a more thorough system of questions and 
feviews than in any other works of the kind. 

' Cheapness.— In introducing these books, there is a great saving of money, as 
She prices for fii-sf Introduction, and for subsequent use, are very low. 

I CLARK & MAYNARD, Publishers, 

; 734 Broadway, N, T, 



English Classics, 

roB 
CLASSES IN ENGLISH LrTERATURE, READING, GRAMMAR, ET 
Edited by Eminekt English j^nd American Scholars. 
MkteA Tolurru contains a Si-etch of the Author's JUfe, Prefatory dnd 

Explanatory ^oies. Etc, Etc 

81 
S2 



1 Byron»9 Tropliecy of Dante. (Cantos 
I and II. ^ 

5 Milton's L' Allesn-o and 11 Pensproso. 
8 Lord Bacon's K s h u y s « CItU uud 

Moral. (Selected.) _ 
4 Byron's P-l8uner of Chinon, 

6 Moore's Fire Worshippers, (Lpna 

Roo' h. Selected from parts I. and II.) 
6 Goldsmith's Deserted Yi11afi;e« 
; Scott's Marmlou. (iselecuoua from 

CantoVi ) 
8 Scott's Lay of tbe Last Minstrel. 

(Introduction and Cant i.) 
8 Burns' Cotter's««turdayXlelit,and 

Other 1 oenis. 

10 Crabbe's the V:na5re, 

11 Campbell's Plea cures of Hope. 

( i.br dgin=*nt of r rtl.) 
1)8 Macaulay's Essay on Banyan's Pll- 

S:rim's Prosrress. . ^ , 

18 Mncaulay's Armada, and Other 

14 Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, 

( -;L'lectioiis froi.i Act.s 1., III.uuclIv'.) 

15 Goldsmith's Traveller. 

16 Hojjs's Queen'8 Wake. 

ir Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, 

18 Addison's Sir Ro^er do Coverley. 

19 Gray's Elegy In a Country Church. 

80 Sco?l?» Lady of the Lake. (Canto 1) 



6hakespeare*8 As Tou Like It, e 

(ri lections ) 
Shakespeare's King John and El' 

Richard IL (cJeiccUo: a.) 
S8 Shakespeare's Klnrr Henry P 

KlniE Ilenry Y., and Kins Hen 

VI. ( elections ) 
84 Shakespeare's Henry VIIL, a 

Julius t'eesar, (beLctloiib) 
25 Vord-^worth'e Excursion, >Book 
feO Pope's Essay on Criticism. 

87 Spenser's Ifuery Queene. (Canto* 

i,nd II.) 

88 Cowper's Task. (Book I.) 
^9 ^^ Ilton's Comus. 

CO Tennyson's EnochArden. 

ei Irvlng's Sketch Book. (Selection 

£8 Dickens' Christmas CaruL (C 

dense d ) 
88 Cnrlyle's Hero as a Prophet. 
&4 Macauluy's Vv arren Uastinn 

densed.) 



Hastings. (C( 
Wakeflel 



85 Goldsmith's Tlcar of 

(Condensed ■> 

86 Tennyson's The Two Voices anil 

I>ream t f Fair A . omen, 

87 Memory Quotations, 
CS CaTaller Poets. 

89 Dryden's Alexander's Feast a 
MacFleeknce. 

40 Keats' 1 he Eve of Pt. Asrnes. 

41 Irving's Legend ox'Sleepy HoUoiv 



Otaera in Pieparatioiu From 83 to 64 pages each, 16n:o. 



Sliakospenre'S Plays — (School Editions); viz : Mercltant 
Venice, Julius Csesar, Kii.g Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Tempei 
As you Like It, K.ing Henry V. With N"te8, Examination Papers a 
Plan of Preparation (Selected). By Bkainkrd Kellogg, A.M., Professor of t 
En°'li^h Langua<;e and Literature in tiie Broolilj^n Collegiate a- d Polyrechnic Ins 
tiite, and author of "A Text-Boolj on Riietoric," "A Text-Book on Engli?h Lite 
lure," and one of tlie authors of Reed & Kellogg'g *' Graded Lessons in Englisl 
and *' Higher Lessons in English." 82ino, flexible, cloth. 

The text of these plays of Shakespeare has been adapted for nse In mixed classes, by 1 
omission of everything that would be considered oflfensive. The notes have been especic 
sslccted to meet the requirements of School and College students, from editions euited 
eminent English Scholars. We are confident that teachers who examine these editions "v 
pronounce them better a lapted to the wants, both of the teacher and student, than any otl 
editions published. Printed from large type, bound in a very attractive cloth binding, s 
sold at nearly one-half the price of other School Editions of Shakespeare. • 

Paradise liost. (Book 1 ) Containing Sketch of Milton's Life— Essay 
the Genius of Milton— Epitome of the Views of the Best-Known Critics on Miltc 
and full Explanatory Notes. Cloth, flexible, 94 pages. 

The Shakes»»eare Reader, Beln^ Extracts from the Plays of Phakospes 
with Introdnctoiy Parao'rapha and Notes, C^rammatical, Historical and Explanato: 
By C. H. WVKES. 160 pp., 16mo, cloth, flexible. 

The CaiJferbury Tal^'s-The prnlngne of Geoffrey Chaucer. The Tc 
Collated with the Seven Olde-t MSS., and Life of the Author. Introductory Notic 
Grammai1|Rritical find Explanatory Notes, and Index to Obsolete and Dime 
Words, By E. F. Willoughby, M.D. 112 pp., 16mo, cloth, flexible. 

An Essay on Man. By ALEXANDEtt P. Pope. With Clarko'a Grammi 
cal Notes, 72 pp., cloth, flexible. 



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